Noun

(en noun)

A building or room where clerical or professional duties are performed.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=2 , passage=We drove back to the office with some concern on my part at the prospect of so large a case. Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines.}}

*

*:There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy.Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place. Pushing men hustle each other at the windows of the purser's office , under pretence of expecting letters or despatching telegrams.

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

, title= Revenge of the nerds , passage=Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food.}}

A bureau, an administrative unit of government.

A position of responsibility of some authority within an organisation.

:

A charge or trust; a function.

*(Bible), (w) xi. 13

*:Inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office .

*(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)

*:They [the eyes] resign their office and their light.

*(John Milton) (1608-1674)

*:Hesperus, whose office is to bring / Twilight upon the earth.

*(Isaac Newton) (1642-1727)

*:In this experiment the several intervals of the teeth of the comb do the office of so many prisms.

Rite, ceremonial observance of social or religious nature.

Religious service, especially a liturgy officiated by a Christian priest or minister.

*(John Evelyn) (1620-1706)

*:This morning was read in the church, after the office was done, the declaration setting forth the late conspiracy against the king's person.

A major administrative division, notably in certain governmental administrations, either at ministry level (e.g. the British Home Office) or within or dependent on such a department.

(lb) That which a person does, either voluntarily or by appointment, for, or with reference to, others; customary duty, or a duty that arises from human relations.

:

*(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)

*:I would I could do a good office between you.

*Doctrine and Covenants 25: 5 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah 1981

*:

*1813 , (Jane Austen), (Pride and Prejudice) , Modern Library Edition (1995), p.144

*:there I readily engaged in the office of pointing out to my friend the certain evils of such a choice.

(lb) The parts of a house given over to household work, storage etc.

*(Francis Bacon) (1561-1626)

*:As for the offices , let them stand at distance.

*1887 , Sir (Arthur Conan Doyle), (A Study in Scarlet) , III:

*:A short passage, bare planked and dusty, led to the kitchen and offices .

An office suite; a collection of work?related computer programs (shortened from several such suites with 'office' in their name).

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