agency
Pluralagencies
- 1A department or administrative unit of a government; also the headquarters or district that the unit administers.
The environmental agency issued new limits on factory emissions.
Several federal agencies coordinated the disaster response.
UsageCapitalized in names (the Central Intelligence Agency) but lowercase in general use: a federal agency.
Similardepartment, bureau, authority, body, office
Note
Government has made the word a naming element, as in the Central Intelligence Agency or the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
- 2A business that conducts transactions or provides services on behalf of others; also the office or territory it covers.
The advertising agency pitched three campaigns to the client.
Our local agency handles insurance claims for several regional firms.
UsageOften after another noun (travel agency, employment agency) or before one: agency worker.
Similarfirm, bureau, office, company
Note
An employment agency supplies an agency worker, someone placed through the business rather than hired directly. Simon Toms described the arrangement in 2012 as a double duty: such an agency owes "work to the individual agency worker, as well as a service to the client." The word implies that three-way relationship.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Agency workers are supplied through an employment agency rather than employed directly by the client. fife.gov.uk
- The cited Simon Toms book was first published in 2012. cambridgescholars.com
- The quotation accurately reproduces Toms's description of responsibilities to both worker and client. eprints.glos.ac.uk
- 3The capacity of a person or thing to act and bring about effects, especially an individual's ability to act independently and make their own free choices.
Sociologists debate how much agency people retain within rigid social structures.
The therapy aimed to restore the patient's sense of personal agency.
UsageOften personal agency, moral agency, a sense of agency.
Similarautonomy, independence, self-determination, control
Oppositepowerlessness, helplessness
Note
A term of art in sociology, philosophy and psychology, where it names something persons have rather than something forces do. It is usually set against social structure: how far people can choose within constraints they did not make. In a looser use the word also covers the power of acting in general, which can belong to climate or Providence as well as to a self.
- 4The function or office held by an agent, or the relationship binding a principal to the person acting on their behalf.
The court examined whether agency existed between the broker and the seller.
Under the doctrine, agency arises when one party consents to act for another.
Note
Law's name for a three-cornered arrangement: one party, the agent, is authorized to act for another, the principal, and can bind them in dealings with third parties. The phrase authority of agency points to the question that matters most, which is what the agent was empowered to do. Keep it apart from the business establishment: here agency is a relationship or an office, not a firm you can walk into.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- An agent acts on behalf of a principal and can bind the principal in dealings with third parties within the relevant authority. law.cornell.edu
- Authority concerns the power delegated by a principal to an agent. law.cornell.edu
Less common meaning
- 5A means or channel by which power is applied or a goal is reached.
The reforms were achieved through the agency of grassroots organizers.
Pollutants reached the lake through the agency of underground streams.
UsageMostly in through the agency of someone or something.
Similarmeans, instrumentality
Practice
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Origin
Latin agere means "to act," and its present participle agēns was the base of Medieval Latin agentia, the source of the English word. French agence and English agent are related.