department

Etymology

Borrowed from French département.

noun

1. A part, portion, or subdivision.
2. A distinct course of life, action, study, or the like.
   Technical things are not his department; he's a people person.
   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. November 14, 2014, Stephen Halliday, “Scotland 1-0 Republic of Ireland: Maloney the hero”, in The Scotsman
3. A specified aspect or quality.
   The 2012 Boston Marathon was outstanding in the temperature department; runners endured temperatures of no less than 88 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. A subdivision of an organization.
   1. (often in proper names) One of the principal divisions of executive government
      the Treasury Department; the Department of Agriculture; police department
   2. (in a university) One of the divisions of instructions
      the physics department; the history department; the math department
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.
   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
   the Department of the Potomac
7. (obsolete) Act of departing; departure.