Definition of section

• n. - The act of cutting, or separation by cutting; as, the section of bodies.
• 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 preemption 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 pass through, an object, as a building, a machine, a succession of strata; profile.