| 释义 |
▪ I. department, n.|dɪˈpɑːtmənt|
Also 5 departement.
[ME. a. F. département (12th c. in Hatzf.) = Pr. departe-, departiment, It. dipartemento, a Romanic deriv. of departire, F. départir: see depart v. and -ment.
The senses in I from OF. were apparently obsolete before those in II were introduced from modern French.]
†I. The action of departing. Obs.
†1. = departure, in various senses:
a. separation;
b. going away, leave-taking, withdrawal;
c. decease.
c1450Mirour Saluacioun 1890 Yt we come to thi joys with out departement. c1477Caxton Jason 65 Alas Jason..prolonge ye and tarye your departement. c1500Melusine 97 Thanne he toke leue of them and they were sorowfull of theire departement. 1572Lament. Lady Scotland in Sc. Poems 16th C. II. 250 Befoir her last department. 1586A. Day Eng. Secretary i. (1625) 87 By meanes whereof grew this..unkinde department betweene us. 1624Wotton Archit. (1672) 61 Our Sight is not well contented with those sudden departments from one extream to another. a1677Barrow Wks. (1686) II. 382 The seperation, department and absence of the soul from the body.
†2. Division, partition, distribution. Obs.
1677Gale Crt. Gentiles iv. 18 Making the distributions and departments of his rayes.
II.
3. a. ‘Separate allotment; province or business assigned to a particular person’ (J.); hence in wider application: A separate division or part of a complex whole or organized system, esp. of activities or studies; a branch, province. Freq. in trivial use.[Johnson, 1755, calls it ‘a French term’.] a1735Arbuthnot (J.), The Roman fleets.. had their several stations and departments. 1764Foote Patron ii. Wks. 1799 I. 349 The highest pitch of perfection in every department of writing but one—the dramatic. 1824T. Creevey Let. 23 Sept. (1903) ii. 83 Lady ― has two maids here—one French and the other Italian, the latter of which presides over the bonnet department. 1832G. Downes Lett. Cont. Countries I. 528 Among the professors..Messrs. Gautier and Picot, whose departments are severally astronomy and history. 1856Sir B. Brodie Psychol. Inq. I. v. 173 Hitherto..little progress has been made in this department of knowledge. 1883Nature 17 May 56 To judge..whether the co-operation of scientific men would have rendered the English department more instructive than it is. 1966Listener 20 Jan. 88/1 It will depend on two things: organization and performance in the field... There are limits to what may be expected of us in either department.
b. spec. One of the separate divisions or branches of state or municipal administration.
In the U.S. the word is used in the titles of the great branches of administration, i.e. (in 1988), the Departments (Depts.) of State (orig. Foreign Affairs), Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, and Education.
In Great Britain, the great departments of State were not so named titularly until the mid-20th c., when a number of new departments were created under that name during the administrative reorganizations of the 1960s and 1970s (alongside others which retained the title Ministry or Office); e.g. (in 1988) the Departments of Education and Science, Employment, Energy, the Environment, Health and Social Security, Trade and Industry, and Transport. The word is also used in naming subdivisions or branches of these, e.g. the Prisons Dept. of the Home Office, and for certain other branches of administration; also in the Departments of a local government authority, as the Highways Department.
1769Junius Lett. i. 3 Only mark how the principal departments of the State are bestowed. 1791Washington Writ. (1892) XII. 81 Statements from the proper department [of the United States] will..apprize you of the exact result. 1863H. Cox Instit. Pref. 7 A general account of the British Government, of the powers and practice of its several departments. Ibid. iii. vii. 696 The regulation of other departments subordinate to the Treasury. 1890M. Townsend U.S. 274 The Department of State was established by Act of Congress July 27, 1789, which act denominated it as the Department of Foreign Affairs. 1892A. B. Hart Form. of Union 144 In establishing the Treasury Department a strong effort was made to create a Secretary of the Treasury as an agent of Congress.
4. a. One of the districts into which France is divided for administrative purposes, and which were substituted for the old provinces in 1790. Also applied to administrative divisions in some other countries. Freq. in French form.
1792Explan. New Terms in Ann. Reg. p. xv, Departments, the general divisions of France. 1793Objections to War Examined 15 Its States broken up and converted into French Departments. 1841W. Spalding Italy & It. Isl. III. 383 Corsica..is still a province of that kingdom [France]. It forms a department, called by its own name. 1846R. Ford Gatherings from Spain iv. 30 The French..introduced their own system of départements, by which districts were neatly squared out. 1859Jephson Brittany xvi. 253 Situated on the confluence of the Ile and the Vilaine, from whence the modern department derives its name. 1964Ann. Reg. 1963 245 From 12–16 June he visited the Charente and Poitou regions and from 24–29 September the départements of Vaucluse, Drôme, Ain, and Rhône.
b. A part, portion, section, region. rare.
1832H. Martineau Demerara i. 2 In the richest regions of this department of the globe.
5. department store orig. U.S., a large shop selling many different kinds of article. Cf. departmental a. 3.
1887in F. Presbrey Advertising (1929) xxxv. 314 Evening Wisconsin..H. Heyn's Department Store. 1893Harper's Mag. Apr. 659/2 They [sc. Brooklyn stores] compare favorably with the best and largest of the department stores of New York. 1910H. G. Wells Mr. Polly i. 24 One of those large, rather low-class establishments which sell everything from pianos and furniture to books and millinery—a department store. 1953Manch. Guardian Weekly 30 July 7 Department stores in up-and-coming cities around the world.
▪ II. deˈpartment, v. nonce-wd.
[f. prec. n.]
trans. To divide into departments, or branches.
1885M. E. Braddon Wyllard's Weird III. 261 Everything was to be classified, departmented. Organisation was to be the leading note. |