function

function n

1 Function, office, duty, province are comparable when they mean the act, acts, activities, or operations expected of a person or thing by virtue of his or its nature, structure, status, or position.

Function is the most comprehensive of these terms, capable of referring not only to a living thing or to a part or member of a living thing but to anything in nature (as the sun, the stars, or the earth) or in art (as poetry, painting, music, or an example of one of these) or to anything constructed that serves a definite end or purpose or is intended to perform a particular kind of work

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fulfill one's function as a mother

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the function of the stomach is to digest food sufficiently to enable it to pass into the intestine

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the function of language is twofold: to communicate emotion and to give information— Huxley

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the function of the leaves of a plant

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the function of criticism

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what after all . . . is the true function of religion?— Dickinson

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Office applies usually to the function of or the work to be performed by a person as a result of his trade, profession, employment, or position with relation to others; in this sense it refers to a service that is expected of one or to a charge that is laid upon one

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O, pardon me for bringing these ill news, since you did leave it for my office, sir— Shak.

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to suppose she would shrink . . . from the office of a friend— Austen

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they exercise the offices of the judge, the priest, the counsellor— Gladstone

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Duty (see also TASK) applies not only to the tasks expected or required to be performed in the course of occupation or employment

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the duties of a cook

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the duties of a hotel porter

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but to the offices associated with status, rank, or calling and generally regarded as inherent in that status, rank, or calling and as imposing an obligation upon the person so stationed

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a man and wife fulfill their biological function when they produce children, but they must still perform their duties as parents in rearing, protecting, and educating those chil- dren

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the governor regarded it as his duty to warn the citizens of the dangers ahead

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it is not only the right, but it is the judicial duty of the court, to examine the whole case as presented by the record— Taney

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it is in large part because of our failure to discharge our peacetime responsibilities as citizens that we must do our grim duty in war or perish— Lodge

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Province (see also FIELD)denotes a function, office, or duty which comes within one's range of jurisdiction, powers, competence, or customary practice

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nursing does not belong to a man; it is not his province— Austen

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it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is— John Marshall

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Analogous words: end, goal, object, objective, purpose (see INTENTION): business, concern, *affair: *task, job

2 *power, faculty

Analogous words: *ability, capacity, capability: action, behavior, operation (see corresponding verbs at ACT)

function vb operate, work, *act, behave, react