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Act of departing; departure. [Obs.] Sudden departments from one extreme to another. Wotton.

A store keeping a great variety of goods which are arranged in several departments, esp. one with dry goods as the principal stock.

Pertaining to a department or division. Burke.

A subordinate department; a bureau. See the Note under Bureau.

A staff department of the United States army charged, under the supervision of the Chief of Staff, with the purchasing and issuing to the army of such supplies as make up the ration. It also supplies, for authorized sales, certain articles of food and other minor stores. It is commanded by any officer of the rank of b…

The department or officers having authority over naval affairs generally.

That department of physics which treats of the atmosphere.

A treatise on amphibious animals; the department of natural history which treats of the Amphibia.

The department of zoölogy which treats of spiders and other Arachnida.

cal corps, etc., besides the staff organizations such as those of the pay and subsistence departments.

A subdivision of a department. [France]

the German empire was dissolved, in 1806. The term is now applied to a council of the war department of the Austrian empire, and the members of different provincial chanceries of that empire are called aulic councilors. P. Cyc.

sometimes called an anabranch. This is the sense of the word as used in the Public Works Department; but the term has also been locally applied to mere back-waters forming stagnant pools and to certain water channels arising from a source.

Any member or part of a body or system; a distinct article; a section or subdivision; a department. "Branches of knowledge." Prescott. It is a branch and parcel of mine oath. Shak.

Hence: A department of public business requiring a force of clerks; the body of officials in a department who labor under the direction of a chief.

A system of carrying on the business of government by means of departments or bureaus, each under the control of a chief, in contradiction to a system in which the officers of government have an associated authority and responsibility; also, government conducted on this system.

zzling question in the science of ethics has given rise, in modern times, to a particular department of it, distinguished by the title of casuistry. Stewart. Casuistry in the science of cases (i.e., oblique deflections from the general rule). De Quincey.

A treatise on Christ; that department of theology which treats of the personality, attributes, or life of Christ.

rimary triangulation and lines of precise leveling in the interior. It now belongs to the Department of Commerce and Labor.

The department of astronomy relating to comets.