from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. One of several components; a piece.
- n. A subdivision of a written work.
- n. Law A division of a statute or code.
- n. A distinct portion of a newspaper: the sports section.
- n. A distinct area of a town, county, or country: a residential section.
- n. A land unit equal to one square mile (2.59 square kilometers), 640 acres, or 1/36 of a township.
- n. The act or process of separating or cutting, especially the surgical cutting or dividing of tissue.
- n. A thin slice, as of tissue, suitable for microscopic examination.
- n. A segment of a fruit, especially a citrus fruit.
- n. Representation of a solid object as it would appear if cut by an intersecting plane, so that the internal structure is displayed.
- n. Music A group of instruments or voices in the same class considered as a division of a band, orchestra, or choir: the rhythm section; the woodwind section.
- n. A class or discussion group of students taking the same course: She taught three sections of English composition.
- n. A portion of railroad track maintained by a single crew.
- n. An area in a train's sleeping car containing an upper and lower berth.
- n. An army tactical unit smaller than a platoon and larger than a squad.
- n. A unit of vessels or aircraft within a division of armed forces.
- n. One of two or more vehicles, such as a bus or train, given the same route and schedule, often used to carry extra passengers.
- n. The character (§) used in printing to mark the beginning of a section.
- n. This character used as the fourth in a series of reference marks for footnotes.
- transitive v. To separate or divide into parts.
- transitive v. To cut or divide (tissue) surgically.
- transitive v. To shade or crosshatch (part of a drawing) to indicate sections.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A cutting; a part cut out from the rest of something.
- n. A part, piece, subdivision of anything.
- n. A part of a document.
- n. An act or instance of cutting.
- n. A cross-section (image that shows an object as if cut along a plane).
- n. An incision or the act of making an incision.
- n. A thin slice of material prepared as a specimen for research.
- n. A group of 10-15 soldiers lead by a non-commissioned officer and forming part of a platoon.
- n. A right inverse.
- n. A piece of residential land usually a quarter of an acre, a plot.
- v. To cut, divide or separate into pieces.
- v. To commit, as for mental health reasons. So called after various sections of legal acts regarding mental health.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. The act of cutting, or separation by cutting.
- n. A part separated from something; a division; a portion; a slice.
- n. A distinct part or portion of a book or writing; a subdivision of a chapter; the division of a law or other writing; a paragraph; an article; hence, the character §, often used to denote such a division.
- n. A distinct part of a country or people, community, class, or the like; a part of a territory separated by geographical lines, or of a people considered as distinct.
- n. One of the portions, of one square mile each, into which the public lands of the United States are divided; one thirty-sixth part of a township. These sections are subdivided into quarter sections for sale under the homestead and preëmption laws.
- n. The figure made up of all the points common to a superficies and a solid which meet, or to two superficies which meet, or to two lines which meet. In the first case the section is a superficies, in the second a line, and in the third a point.
- n. A division of a genus; a group of species separated by some distinction from others of the same genus; -- often indicated by the sign §.
- n. A part of a musical period, composed of one or more phrases. See Phrase.
- n. The description or representation of anything as it would appear if cut through by any intersecting plane; depiction of what is beyond a plane passing through, or supposed to 