4. Subdivision of business or official duty; especially, one of the principal divisions of executive government; as,
the treasury department; the war department; also, in a university, one of the divisions of instruction; as,
the medical department; the department of physics.
5. A territorial division; a district; esp., in France, one of the districts composed of several arrondissements
into which the country is divided for governmental purposes; as, the Department of the Loire.
6. A military subdivision of a country; as, the Department of the Potomac.
Departmental
(De`part*men"tal) a. Pertaining to a department or division. Burke.
Departure
(De*par"ture) n. [From Depart.]
1. Division; separation; putting away. [Obs.]
No other remedy . . . but absolute departure.
Milton. 2. Separation or removal from a place; the act or process of departing or going away.
Departure from this happy place.
Milton. 3. Removal from the present life; death; decease.
The time of my departure is at hand.
2 Tim. iv. 6.
His timely departure . . . barred him from the knowledge of his son's miseries.
Sir P. Sidney. 4. Deviation or abandonment, as from or of a rule or course of action, a plan, or a purpose.
Any departure from a national standard.
Prescott. 5. (Law) The desertion by a party to any pleading of the ground taken by him in his last antecedent
pleading, and the adoption of another. Bouvier.
6. (Nav. & Surv.) The distance due east or west which a person or ship passes over in going along an
oblique line.
Since the meridians sensibly converge, the departure in navigation is not measured from the beginning
nor from the end of the ship's course, but is regarded as the total easting or westing made by the ship
or person as he travels over the course.
To take a departure (Nav. & Surv.), to ascertain, usually by taking bearings from a landmark, the
position of a vessel at the beginning of a voyage as a point from which to begin her dead reckoning; as,
the ship took her departure from Sandy Hook.
Syn. — Death; demise; release. See Death.
Depascent
(De*pas"cent) a. [L. depascens, p. pr. of depascere; de- + pascere to feed.] Feeding.
[R.]
Depasture
(De*pas"ture) v. t. & i. To pasture; to feed; to graze; also, to use for pasture. [R.]
Cattle, to graze and departure in his grounds.
Blackstone.
A right to cut wood upon or departure land.
Washburn.
