# agency
## English
### Etymology

From Medieval Latin agentia, from Latin agēns (present participle of agere (“to act”)), agentis (cognate with French agence, see also agent).

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈeɪ.d͡ʒən.si/
* Audio (US):(file)

### Noun

agency (countable and uncountable, plural agencies)
* The capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.
    Synonyms: action, activity, operation
** 1695, John Woodward, “(please specify the page)”, in An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth: And Terrestrial Bodies, Especially Minerals: […], London: […] Ric[hard] Wilkin […], →OCLC:A few advances there are in the following papers tending to assert the superintendence and agency of Providence in the natural world.
** 2018, Morris Zelditch, Status, Power, and Legitimacy, page 65:Because structure in this argument means institutions— pregiven norms, values, beliefs, and practices— it is open-textured, incomplete, cannot guarantee its own applications, therefore, all behavior is action, has agency (Garfinkel 1964; Strauss et al. 1963).
* (sociology, philosophy, psychology) The capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.
    Coordinate terms: free will, structure
    moral agency
    individual agency
** 2001, Todd McGowan, The Feminine "No!", SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 105:Formally, capitalism performs its fundamental gesture—reappropriation without transformation. This bears on the question of subjective agency because this “reappropriation without transformation” is exactly what agency seeks to avoid; such a process indicates, in fact, that one's agency has failed, that one really had no agency in the first place.
** 2012, Edmund V. Sullivan, A Critical Psychology, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 75:Strictly speaking, at the level of personal agency one could say that power is a condition where one is “enabled.” I would contend that this is a condition of personal agency.
** 2013, Andy Clark, Julian Kiverstein, Tillmann Vierkant, Decomposing the Will, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 112:The feeling of being in control of one's body should involve the sense of body-ownership, plus an additional sense of agency.
** 2019 August 26, qntm, “Unthreaded”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 161:SCP-3125 incarnated the following winter. Its first act upon its arrival — or, depending on the degree of intelligent agency you ascribed to it, the first side-effect of its arrival — was the neutralisation of the Foundation.
* A medium through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.
    Synonyms: instrumentality, means
* The office or function of an agent; also, the relationship between a principal and that person's agent.
    authority of agency
* An establishment engaged in doing business for another; also, the place of business or the district of such an agency.
    Synonym: management
    Hyponyms: advertising agency, dating agency, employment agency, escort agency, introduction agency, modelling agency, news agency, press agency, relief agency, syndication agency, travel agency
** 2012, Simon Toms, The Impact of the UK Temporary Employment Industry in Assisting Agency Workers since the Year 2000, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 277:As an employment agency you have a responsibility to supply work to the individual agency worker, as well as a service to the client.
* A department or other administrative unit of a government; also, the office or headquarters of, or the district administered by, such unit of government.
    Hyponyms: antitrust agency, intelligence agency, space agency
    Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
    Central Intelligence Agency

#### Derived terms

* advertising agency
* agency credit memo
* agency debit memo
* agencylike
* agency pricing
* agency shop
* agencywide
* alphabet agency
* cabinet agency
* causal agency
* coagency
* collection agency
* counteragency
* Crow Agency
* cyberagency
* dating agency
* employment agency
* escort agency
* estate agency
* free agency
* Highways Agency
* intelligence agency
* interagency
* inter-agency
* introduction agency
* marriage agency
* miniagency
* moral agency
* multiagency
* news agency
* newsagency
* nonagency
* press agency
* regulatory agency
* relief agency
* service agency
* space agency
* state liquor agency
* subagency
* superagency
* syndication agency
* temp agency
* three-letter agency
* three letter agency
* tourist agency
* travel agency

#### Related terms

* act
* action
* agent

#### Translations
### Further reading

* “agency”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* agency on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* agency (sociology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* agency (philosophy) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* law of agency on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* moral agency on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* structure and agency on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

### Anagrams

* Cagney, gynæc-