AGENCY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Agency

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ˈeɪdʒənsi/ Listen

noun

agency n. (pl. agencies)

The faculty of acting or of exerting power; the state of being in action; action; instrumentality. "The superintendence and agency of Providence in the natural world."

The office of an agent, or factor; the relation between a principal and his agent; business of one intrusted with the concerns of another.

The place of business of an agent.

An organization or business that provides some service, primarily for other organizations; as, an advertising agency.

An administrative division of a government; as, a state welfare agency; a motor vehicle agency; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Synonyms: Action; operation; efficiency; management.

See images of 'Agency'

Etymology of 'Agency'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Agency" Quotes from Famous Books

... Superman; for what is proposed is nothing but the replacement of the old unintelligent, inevitable, almost unconscious fertility by an intelligently controlled, conscious fertility, and the elimination of the mere voluptuary from the evolutionary process.[1] Even if this selective agency had not been invented, the purpose of the race would still shatter the opposition of individual instincts. Not only do the bees and the ants satisfy their reproductive and parental instincts vicariously; but marriage itself successfully imposes celibacy on millions of ...

— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... this matter is fraught with danger! Listen, sir! How Warfield got possession of this girl or the knowledge of her history I do not know, except that it was through the agency of that accursed hag Nancy Grewell. But that he has her and that he knows all about her is but too certain. That he has not at present legal proof enough to establish her identity and her rights before a court of justice I infer from the fact of his ...

— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... followed. For a couple of hours we had been materialists, concerning ourselves not with what Mary had done by grace—at least not in that aspect—but with what nature showed to have been done, by whatever agency, in itself. Now once ...

— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson

... may have been one case once; this may be winked at, but it must not occur again. "It is enough," he writes, "that a single particle of living protoplasm should once have appeared on the globe as the result of no matter what agency. In the eyes of a consistent [!] evolutionist any further [!] independent formation of protoplasm would be sheer waste"—and the sooner the Almighty gets to understand that He must not make that single act of special creation into a precedent the ...

— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... fresh from college, had come to New York to find his fortune, the elder Kaufmann had been a candy manufacturer with a modest trade on the East Side. Young Houghton had taken the agency of a glucose firm. The disposal of this product had brought the two together, with the result that a partnership had been formed to carry on a wholesale confectionery business. Success in this venture had led to new and more profitable fields—the ...

— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

More quotes...