Etymologically
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department

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: UK /dɪˈpɑːt.mənt/, US /dɪˈpɑːrt.mənt/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English departement, borrowed from Middle French departement (“division, sharing out; departure”) (modern département),[2][3][4] from departir (“to divide”),[2][5][6] from Late Latin dēpartīre (“to divide”),[3] from dē- (“from”) and partīre (“to part, divide”),[3] from pars (“part, share”).[3] Etymonline traces it to Proto-Indo-European *pere- (“to grant, allot”).[3] It is related to depart and part.[5][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Departure, also death: about 1450,[8][2] or about 1500 according to Etymonline;[3] the SOED gives division or partition as its first, rare, sense.[4]

Semantic evolution

The early senses, “departure” and “division, distribution”, are now obsolete.[4][8] French département also came to mean a group of people,[3][2] and English took from it the sense “separate division, a province of business assigned to someone”, recorded before 1735 in Johnson's dictionary.[8][2][9] One of the branches of state or municipal administration is a department from 1769,[8] and one of the administrative districts of France from 1792.[8] Departmental is from 1791,[2] and department store from 1887.[2]

Timeline

  • c. 1450 – departure; death (obsolete).[8]
  • 1677 – division, distribution (obsolete).[8]
  • before 1735 – a separate branch or province of work.[8][2]
  • 1769 – a branch of government.[8]
  • 1791 – departmental.[2]
  • 1792 – a French administrative district.[8]
  • 1887 – department store.[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A distinct, usually specialized division of a large organization, such as a government, business, school or university.
  2. One of the administrative districts of France.
  3. (informal) An area of special skill or responsibility: that's not my department.

Word family

  • departmental
  • departmentally
  • subdepartment
  • interdepartmental
  • department store
  • fire department
  • state department
  • depart
  • part
  • departure
  • partition
  • particle

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  6. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster