A group of like instruments in a band of some sort, i.e., the percussion section or flute section. In a marching band or drum corps, sections are sometimes called lines instead, like drum line.

KANJI: KA shina (section, department, course, faculty)

ASCII Art Representation:

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Character Etymology:

The radical for rice plant (at left) next to the radical symbolizing to measure, yielding a meaning of "measuring grain." By extention this came to mean to sift or sort and then category, which by further extension came to mean section. School subject is an associated meaning.

A Listing of All On-Yomi and Kun-Yomi Readings:

on-yomi: KA
kun-yomi: shina

English Definitions:

  1. KA: course, branch, department, faculty], school, college; arm (of defense); family (in biology).
  2. ka(suru), ka(su): inflict ([punishment), fine.
  3. toga: fault, blame; charge, effense, sin, transgressions, trespasses.
  4. shina: actions, deportment.
  5. shigusa: acting, gestures.

Character Index Numbers:

New Nelson: 4130
Henshall: 81

Unicode Encoded Version:

Unicode Encoded Compound Examples:

(kagaku): the study of thesciences.
(gakka): school subject.
(kamoku): subdivision (in scientific classifications).
研究科 (kenkyuuka): research section.

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Sec"tion (?), n. [L. sectio, fr. secare, sectum, to cut; akin to E. saw a cutting instrument: cf. F. section. See Saw, and cf. Scion, Dissect, Insect, Secant, Segment.]

1.

The act of cutting, or separation by cutting; as, the section of bodies.

2.

A part separated from something; a division; a portion; a slice. Specifically: --

(a) 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.

It is hardly possible to give a distinct view of his several arguments in distinct sections. Locke.

(b) 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.

The extreme section of one class consists of bigoted dotards, the extreme section of the other consists of shallow and reckless empirics. Macaulay.

(c) 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 preemption laws.

3. Geom.

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.

4. Nat. Hist.

A division of a genus; a group of species separated by some distinction from others of the same genus; -- often indicated by the sign §.

5. Mus.

A part of a musical period, composed of one or more phrases. See Phrase.

6.

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 pass through, an object, as a building, a machine, a succession of strata; profile.

⇒ In mechanical drawing, as in these Illustrations of a cannon, a longitudinal section (a) usually represents the object as cut through its center lengthwise and vertically; a cross or transverse section (b), as cut crosswise and vertically; and a horizontal section (c), as cut through its center horizontally. Oblique sections are made at various angles. In architecture, a vertical section is a drawing showing the interior, the thickness of the walls, ets., as if made on a vertical plane passed through a building.

Angular sections Math., a branch of analysis which treats of the relations of sines, tangents, etc., of arcs to the sines, tangents, etc., of their multiples or of their parts. [R.] -- Conic sections. Geom. See under Conic. -- Section liner Drawing, an instrument to aid in drawing a series of equidistant parallel lines, -- used in representing sections. -- Thin sections, a section or slice, as of mineral, animal, or vegetable substance, thin enough to be transparent, and used for study under the microscope.

Syn. -- Part; portion; division. -- Section, Part. The English more commonly apply the word section to a part or portion of a body of men; as, a section of the clergy, a small section of the Whigs, etc. In the United States this use is less common, but another use, unknown or but little known in England, is very frequent, as in the phrases "the eastern section of our country," etc., the same sense being also given to the adjective sectional as, sectional feelings, interests, etc.

 

© Webster 1913.

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