use-icon

HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY

To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.

Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.

guide to the dictionary

use-icon

THE USAGE PANEL

The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.

The Panelists

open-icon

AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP

The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.

scroll-icon

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG

The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.

100-words-icon

See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series!

Find out more!

open-icon

INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES?

Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com

di·vi·sion (dĭ-vĭzhən)
Share:
n.
1.
a. The act or process of dividing.
b. The state of having been divided.
2. Mathematics The operation of determining how many times one quantity is contained in another; the inverse of multiplication.
3. The proportional distribution of a quantity or entity: the division of his property among his heirs.
4. Something, such as a boundary or partition, that serves to divide or keep separate.
5. One of the parts, sections, or groups into which something is divided.
6.
a. An area of government or corporate activity organized as an administrative or functional unit.
b. A territorial section marked off for political or governmental purposes.
7.
a. An administrative and tactical military unit that is smaller than a corps but is self-contained and equipped for prolonged combat activity.
b. A group of several ships of similar type forming a tactical unit under a single command in the US Navy.
c. A former unit of the US Air Force that was larger than a wing and smaller than an air force.
8. Botany The taxonomic category ranking just below kingdom, consisting of one or more related classes, and corresponding approximately to a phylum in zoological classification.
9. A category created for purposes of competition, as in boxing.
10.
a. Variance of opinion; disagreement.
b. A splitting into factions; disunion.
11. The physical separation and regrouping of members of a parliament according to their stand on an issue put to vote.
12. Biology Cell division.
13. A type of propagation characteristic of plants that spread by means of newly formed parts such as bulbs, suckers, or rhizomes.

[Middle English divisioun, from Old French division, from Latin dīvīsiō, dīvīsiōn-, from dīvīsus, past participle of dīvidere, to divide; see DIVIDE.]

di·vision·al adj.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.