Noun

(en noun)

The action of directing; pointing (something) or looking towards.

* 1835 , Sir , Sir (James Clark Ross), Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-west Passage …, Volume 1 , pp.284-5

Towards the following morning, the thermometer fell to 5°; and at daylight, there was not an atom of water to be seen in any direction .

Guidance, instruction.

The work of the director in cinema or theater; the skill of directing a film, play etc.

(archaic) An address.

* 1796 , , (The Monk) , Folio Society 1985, p. 218:

Her aunt Leonella was still at Cordova, and she knew not her direction .

The path or course of a given movement, or moving body; an indication of the point toward or from which an object is moving.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.}}

* 1900 , , (The House Behind the Cedars) , Chapter I,

Just before Warwick reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front Street from the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged, Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already his intention to walk in this direction .

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