agency
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: human-sciences
philosophy
psychology
sciences
social-science
sociology
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *h₂eǵ-
Proto-Indo-European *-eti
Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵeti
Proto-Italic *agō
Latin agō
Medieval Latin agēns
Proto-Indo-European *-yós
Proto-Italic *-ios
Old Latin -ios
Medieval Latin -ius
Medieval Latin -ia
Medieval Latin agēntiabor.
English agency
From Medieval Latin agentia, from Latin agēns (present participle of agere (“to act”)), agentis (cognate with French agence, see also agent).
Inflected forms:
form: agencies
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: The capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: A few advances there are in the following papers tending to assert the superintendence and agency of Providence in the natural world.
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).
gloss: The capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: moral agency
individual agency
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.
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.
The feeling of being in control of one's body should involve the sense of body-ownership, plus an additional sense of agency.
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.
gloss: A medium through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: The office or function of an agent; also, the relationship between a principal and that person's agent.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: authority of agency
gloss: An establishment engaged in doing business for another; also, the place of business or the district of such an agency.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: As an employment agency you have a responsibility to supply work to the individual agency worker, as well as a service to the client.
gloss: A department or other administrative unit of a government; also, the office or headquarters of, or the district administered by, such unit of government.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Central Intelligence Agency
Synonyms: action
activity
agency
agent
agentship
cause
device
force
function
means
operation
power
Antonyms: nonagency
Related words: act
action
agent
Derived words: agencylike
agencywide
inter-agency
Translations: