Other forms: offices
An office is the room with desks and computers where many people do their jobs. Work in an office.
It also means a position held, as in the office of mayor, which is the older sense. An office is quieter than it was, since half the talking now happens in writing.
1nounofficeThe room with desks and computers where many people do their jobs.
“She works in an office in the city centre and takes the train every morning.”
office is a room.
From Latin opificium, the doing of work — opus, work, and facere, to do. An office was something you did long before it was a room you did it in.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₃ep-
Latin
officium — personal, official, or moral duty; official position; function; ceremony, esp. last rites
Old French
office
Middle English
office
English, today
office
Built from
From Middle English office, from Old French office, from Latin officium (“personal, official, or moral duty; official position; function; ceremony, esp. last rites”), contracted from opificium (“construction: the act of building or the thing built”), from opifex (“doer of work, craftsman”) + -ium (“-y”), from opus (“work”) + -i- + -fex. In the religious sense, Displaced native Old English hād. The computing sense is a of various proprietary program suites, such as Microsoft Office.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA