Definition of "office" []

• A place in which business, clerical, or professional activities are conducted. (noun)
• The administrative personnel, executives, or staff working in such a place. (noun)
• A duty or function assigned to or assumed by someone. See Synonyms at function. (noun)
• A position of authority, duty, or trust given to a person, as in a government or corporation: the office of vice president. (noun)
• A subdivision of a governmental department: the U.S. Patent Office. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Replacing the receiver, he thought urgently of some second-choice number where there would be no answer out of office hours and decided on his solicitor: Those buggers hardly ever turned up even _within _office hours."
• "A passage frown Jerome's _Epistle to Evangelus_ is often quoted in works on church government, as equalising, or nearly so, the office of bishop and presbyter; but the drift of the argument seems to be, to show that the _site_ of a bishop's see, be it great or small, important or otherwise, does not affect the episcopal _office_."
• "At the office -- at the _office_, mind -- I received a letter from"