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Company vs Department - What's the difference?

company | department |

As nouns the difference between company and department

is that company is a team; a group of people who work together professionally while department is a part, portion, or subdivision.

As a verb company

is (archaic|transitive) to accompany, keep company with.

company

Noun

  • A team; a group of people who work together professionally.
  • # A group of individuals who work together for a common purpose.
  • # (label) A unit of approximately sixty to one hundred and twenty soldiers, typically consisting of two or three platoons and forming part of a battalion.
  • #* {{quote-book, year=1907, author=
  • , chapter=30, title= The Dust of Conflict , passage=It was by his order the shattered leading company flung itself into the houses when the Sin Verguenza were met by an enfilading volley as they reeled into the calle.}}
  • # A unit of firefighters and their equipment.
  • # (label) The entire crew of a ship.
  • # (label) Nickname for an intelligence service.
  • (label) An entity having legal personality, and thus able to own property and to sue and be sued in its own name; a corporation.
  • * {{quote-book, author=Robert Barr, authorlink=Robert Barr (writer), title=Lord Stranleigh Abroad, chapter=4 citation
  • , year=1913, passage=“
  • (label) Any business, whether incorporated or not, that manufactures or sells products (also known as goods), or provides services as a commercial venture.
  • * {{quote-magazine, author=George Monbiot, authorlink=George Monbiot
  • , volume=188, issue=23, page=19, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title=Money just makes the rich suffer citation
  • * {{quote-magazine
  • , title=Obama goes troll-hunting citation
  • (label) Social visitors or companions.
  • *
  • * '>citation
  • *{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers)
  • , chapter=5, title= A Cuckoo in the Nest , passage=The departure was not unduly prolonged. In the road Mr. Love and the driver favoured the company with a brief chanty running. “Got it?—No, I ain't, 'old on,—Got it? Got it?—No, 'old on sir.”}}
  • (label) Companionship.
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1 , passage=He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company . When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me.}}

    Synonyms

    * corporation

    Derived terms

    * a man is known by the company he keeps * British East India Company * companiate * company clinic * company doctor * company front * company man * company officer * company seal * company-specific risk * company store * company time * company town * company union * fast company * fire company * growth company * holding company * in-company * incorporated company * insurance company * intracompany * investment company * joint-stock company * keep somebody company * listed company * limited liability company * livery company * management company * mixed company * mutual company * offshore company * parent company * present company excepted * private company * quoted company * shell company * ship's company * sister company * stock company * the company * title company * touring company * trust company * * you don't dip your pen in company ink

    Verb

  • (archaic) To accompany, keep company with.
  • * 1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , Acts X:
  • Ye dooe knowe howe thatt hytt ys an unlawefull thynge for a man beynge a iewe to company or come unto an alient [...].
  • * 1891 , Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country , Nebraska 2005, p. 2:
  • it was with a distinctly fallen countenance that his father hearkened to his mother's parenthetical request to “’bide hyar an’ company leetle Moses whilst I be a-milkin’ the cow.”
  • (archaic) To associate.
  • * Bible, Acts i. 21
  • Men which have companied with us all the time.
  • (obsolete) To be a lively, cheerful companion.
  • (Spenser)
  • (obsolete) To have sexual intercourse.
  • (Bishop Hall)

    Statistics

    * ----

    department

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A part, portion, or subdivision.
  • A distinct course of life, action, study, or the like.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2014
  • , date=November 14 , author=Stephen Halliday , title=Scotland 1-0 Republic of Ireland: Maloney the hero , work=The Scotsman citation , page= , passage=Flair and invention were very much at a premium, suffocated by the relentless pace and often fractious nature of proceedings. The absence of James Morrison from the centre of Scotland’s midfield, the West Brom man ruled out on the morning of the game by illness, had already diminished the creative capacity of the home side in that department .}}
  • * (and other bibliographic particulars), (Thomas Babington Macaulay)
  • A subdivision of an organization.
  • # One of the principal divisions of executive government
  • the Treasury Department'''''; ''the '''Department''' of Agriculture''; ''police '''department
  • # One of the divisions of instructions
  • the physics department'''''; ''the gender studies '''department
  • A territorial division; a district; especially, in France, one of the districts composed of several arrondissements into which the country is divided for governmental purposes.
  • * 2002 , , The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to the 1715-99 , Penguin 2003, p. 427:
  • The departments were the bricks from which the edifice of the nation was to be constructed.
  • (label) A military subdivision of a country; as, the Department of the Potomac.
  • (label) Act of departing; departure.
  • * (and other bibliographic particulars), Wotton
  • sudden 'departments from one extreme to another

    Synonyms

    * (distinct course) province, specialty * (division of executive government) ministry

    Derived terms

    * departmental * departmentally

    See also

    * province * state