agency
part of speech
noun (an agency, agencies)
meaning for a pupil
1) An agency is a business or organisation that provides a service for other people, like a travel agency. tree →
2) An agency is a part of a government that does special work, like a space agency. tree →
3) Agency can also mean the power to make your own choices. tree →
4) Agency can also mean the action or means by which something happens. tree →
sense in the lessons
In everyday life: travel agency, news agency, employment agency. In science and the news: space agencies (like NASA) send rockets and satellites into space; environment agencies look after nature. In stories, a spy works for a secret agency.
examples
- We booked our holiday through a travel agency. tree →
- The space agency launched a new rover to Mars. tree →
- A news agency sends stories to newspapers. tree →
- Mum found her new job through an agency. tree →
- In the film, the spy works for a secret agency. tree →
- The weather agency warned of strong winds. tree →
- These fables, again, were among the books brought into an extended circulation by the agency of the printing press. tree →
note
Countable: an agency, two agencies (y changes to ies). A person who works for one is an agent. Spelled with -ency.
In the corpora
- In March 2024 photo agencies withdrew a Mother's Day family photo because it had been edited, and the Princess apologised.
- Mila gets a letter from her birth mum once a year, passed on through the adoption agency; this is called letterbox contact.
- Letterbox contact means letters between an adopted child's family and the birth family, passed on through an agency.
- Great Britain's national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey, began in 1791 and makes detailed maps at scales of 1:25,000 and 1:50,000.
- Charities and UN agencies use donations to buy food, medicine, blankets and generators for people in and around Ukraine.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «agency» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.