Definition of "department"

department

/dɪˈpɑːtm(ə)nt/

noun
plural departments
1. A part, portion, or subdivision.
2. A distinct course of life, action, study, or the like.
  Quotations
  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.
  2014 November 14, Stephen Halliday, “Scotland 1-0 Republic of Ireland: Maloney the hero”, in The Scotsman‎
  superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of literature
  1856 December, [Thomas Babington] Macaulay, “Samuel Johnson ”, in T[homas] F[lower] E[llis], editor, The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, new edition, London: Longman, Green, Reader, & Dyer, published 1871
3. A specified aspect or quality.
4. A subdivision of an organization.
  1. (often in proper names) One of the principal divisions of executive government
  2. (in a university) One of the divisions of instructions
5. A territorial division; a district; especially, in France, one of the districts into which the country is divided for governmental purposes, similar to a county in the UK and in the USA. France is composed of 101 départements organized in 18 régions, each department is divided into arrondissements, in turn divided into cantons.
  Quotations
  The departments were the bricks from which the edifice of the nation was to be constructed.
  2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to the 1715-99, Penguin, published 2003, page 427
6. (historical) A military subdivision of a country
7. (obsolete) Act of departing; departure.
  Quotations
  For though Contraria iuxta ſe poſita magis illuceſcunt [opposites placed next to each other shine more brightly] (by an olde Rule) yet it hath beene ſubtilly, and indeede truely noted that our Sight, is not vvell contented, vvith thoſe ſudden departments, from one extreame to another; Therefore let them haue, rather a Duskiſh Tincture, then an abſolute blacke.
  1624, Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture, […], London: […] Iohn Bill, II. part, page 104