| Department 1. (v. i.) Act of departing; departure. 2. (n.) A part, portion, or subdivision. 3. (n.) A distinct course of life, action, study, or the like; appointed sphere or walk; province. 4. (v. i.) Subdivision of business or official duty; especially, one of the principal divisions of executive government; as, the treasury department; the war department; also, in a university, one of the divisions of instruction; as, the medical department; the department of physics. 5. (n.) A territorial division; a district; esp., in France, one of the districts composed of several arrondissements into which the country is divided for governmental purposes; as, the Department of the Loire. 6. (n.) A military subdivision of a country; as, the Department of the Potomac. Thesaurus Entries airspace, ambit, area, arena, bailiwick, beat, belt, border, borderland, branch, bureau, circle, circuit, commissariat, concern, confines, constablery, constablewick, constabulary, continental shelf, control, corridor, country, demesne, discipline, district, division, domain, dominion, environs, field, ground, heartland, hemisphere, hinterland, judicial circuit, jurisdiction, land, march, milieu, ministry, municipality, neighborhood, office, offshore rights, orb, orbit, pale, part, parts, place, precinct, precincts, premises, province, purlieus, quarter, realm, region, responsibility, round, salient, secretariat, section, segment, sheriffalty, sheriffwick, shrievalty, soil, space, sphere, subdiscipline, subdivision, terrain, territory, three-mile limit, twelve-mile limit, unit, vicinage, vicinity, walk, worry, zone |