Noun

(en noun)

The act of founding, fixing, establishing, or beginning to erect.

That upon which anything is founded; that on which anything stands, and by which it is supported; the lowest and supporting layer of a superstructure; groundwork; basis; underbuilding.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The attack of the MOOCs , passage=Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations . University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.}}

(card games) In solitaire or patience games, one of the piles of cards that the player attempts to build, usually holding all cards of a suit in ascending order.

(architecture) The lowest and supporting part or member of a wall, including the base course and footing courses; in a frame house, the whole substructure of masonry.

* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=May 20, author=Nathan Rabin, work=The Onion AV Club

, title= TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Marge Gets A Job” (season 4, episode 7; originally aired 11/05/1992) , passage=“Marge Gets A Job” opens with the foundation of the Simpson house tilting perilously to one side, making the family homestead look like the suburban equivalent of the Leaning Tower Of Pisa. }}

A donation or legacy appropriated to support a charitable institution, and constituting a permanent fund; endowment.

That which is founded, or established by endowment; an endowed institution or charity.

(cosmetics) Cosmetic cream roughly skin-colored, designed to make the face appear uniform in color and texture.

A basis for social bodies or intellectual disciplines.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.

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