Noun

(en-noun)

(uncountable) The act of administering; government of public affairs; the service rendered, or duties assumed, in conducting affairs; the conducting of any office or employment; direction.

(countable) A body that administers; the executive part of government; the persons collectively who are entrusted with the execution of laws and the superintendence of public affairs; the chief magistrate and his cabinet or council; or the council, or ministry, alone, as in Great Britain.

Successive US administrations have had similar Middle East policies.

(uncountable) The act of administering, or tendering something to another; dispensation.

''the administration of a medicine, of an oath, of justice, or of the sacrament.

(uncountable, business) Management.

(uncountable, legal, UK) An arrangement whereby an insolvent company can continue trading under supervision.

The company went into voluntary administration last week.

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