How many definitions does the word ‘depot’ have? What are they?
Could you enlighten me as to them?
Fimbriae, why don’t you look up such questions in a dictionary? There are several excellent dictionaries online, such as thefreedictionary.com and dictionary.com. This will take you less time and give you an answer faster than posting a question here.
I copied this from the Oxford English Dictionary. I suspect you might be looking for definition 4b.
"("dEp@U, dI"p@U, "di;p@U) [a. F. dépôt (depo), in OF. depost (14th c. in Littré and Hatzf.), (= It., Sp. deposito), ad. L. dUpositum: see depositum, deposit, depost, all forms of the same word.
As in the case of other words from modern French, the pronunciation varies widely. The French (depo), with short e and o and undefined stress, is foreign to English habits of utterance. The earlier English rendering, as shown by the dictionaries down to 1860–70, was, according to the French historical stress and quantity, or the English conception of it (cf. bureau, chateau, Tussaud), (di;"p@U), or, with a conscious effort to reproduce the first vowel in French, (deI"p@U); these pronunciations were (1895) still heard, but the stress is now more usually on the first syllable, and the quantity of the o doubtful, giving ("dEp@U, "di;p@U), in England, ("di;p@U, "deIp@U), in U.S. (where the word is much more in popular use, and ("di;pQt, di;"pQt), are mentioned by Longfellow, Lowell, etc., as popular vulgarisms). The form ("dEp@U) comes as near the French (depo) as English analogies admit. The earlier Eng. spelling omitted the accent-marks, and this is now usual; the spelling depôt belongs especially to the pronunciation (di;"p@U); the actual F. spelling dépôt goes together with the attempt to pronounce as in French.]
†1. The act of depositing; deposit, deposition. Obs. rare.
1794 Sullivan View Nat. I. 72 Some [mountains] have+ been formed by successive depôts in the sea.
†2. A deposit or collection (of matter, supplies, etc.); = deposit n. 3, 1. Obs.
1835 Sir J. Ross Narr. 2nd Voy. xxxvii. 513 To fetch a third depot of fish. 1850 W. B. Clarke Wreck Favorite 133 The nelleys had discovered our depôt of blubber and had eaten a portion of it.
- Mil. a. A place where military stores are deposited. b. The head-quarters of a regiment, where supplies are received and whence they are distributed. c. A station where recruits are assembled and drilled, and where soldiers who cannot join their regiments remain. d. attrib. Applied to a portion of a regiment which remains at home when the rest are on foreign service.
1798 Beresford in Ld. Auckland’s Corr. III. 412 Large quantities of arms are in their possession. Dublin is the great depôt. 1812 W. C. in Examiner 25 May 334/2 Barracks and Military Depots are building. 1844 Regul. & Ord. Army 80 By the continual transit of Officers between the Service and Depôt Companies. 1853 Stocqueler Milit. Encycl. s.v., Regiments embarking for India usually leave one company at home, for the purpose of recruiting, which is called the depôt company. 1859 Musketry Instr. 85 When men leave a depôt battalion to join the service companies. 1861 Swinhoe N. China Camp. 7 The island [of Chusan]+from its central position, would form a good depôt for troops.
e. A place of confinement for prisoners of war.
The name used both in France and England during the War with Napoleon.
1806 J. Forbes Lett. fr. France I. 231 Prisoners of war+[at] Fontainbleau and Valenciennes, the two principal depots appointed for that purpose. 1814 D. H. O’Brien Captiv. & Escape 87 We were safely lodged in Sarre Louis jail. This is a dépôt for seamen, and one of punishment for officers who may transgress. 1839 36 Years Sea-faring Life 29 Fearing death almost as little as a life of misery in a French depot.
- a. A place where goods are deposited or stored; e.g. a coal depot, grain depot, furniture depot; a store-house, depository, emporium.
1795 tr. Moritz’s Travels 241 There was written on the sign: ‘The Navigation Inn’; because it is the depôt, or storehouse, of the colliers of the Trent. 1802 Edin. Rev. I. 142 Lake Winipic+seems calculated+to become the grand depot of this traffic. 1804 H. T. Colebrooke Husb. Bengal (1806) 184 It is not practicable to render Great Britain the general dépôt of saltpetre. 1863 Sir G. G. Scott in Archæol. Cant. V. 7 note, The church was used as the coal depôt for the castle. 1872 Yeats Growth Comm. 154 Grain brought down to the maritime depots+in the Crimea.
b. Physiol. The site of an accumulation or deposit of a substance (esp. fat) in an animal body. So attrib., applied to any substance stored for eventual absorption by the organism, or to an action or process concerned with the deposition of such a substance.
1835–6 Todd Cycl. Anat. I. 515/2 Depots of matter take place in the disorganized tissue. 1906 L. Hill Rec. Adv. Physiol. & Bio-Chem. xi. 288 The proteid metabolism+only begins to increase in the final stage of starvation when the reserve of depôt fat is almost exhausted. 1912 E. H. Starling Princ. Human Physiol. xi. 884 From the physiological standpoint the most important intracellular depôt of fat is in the liver. 1930 Jrnl. Biol. Chem. LXXXVII. 148 Fat obtained from the various depots. Ibid., The total depot fat. 1936 Nature 21 Mar. 479/1 As we pass from depot fats of aquatic to those of land animals we find marked simplification in the mixed fatty acids. 1959 Chambers’s Encycl. V. 601/1 The composition of the fat depots is practically identical with the fat in the food. 1961 Lancet 12 Aug. 345/1 A steroid preparation which is highly concentrated, and has a depot effect. Ibid. 9 Sept. 577/2 Daily injections+were replaced by a single intramuscular depot injection. 1970 Passmore & Robson Compan. Med. Stud. II. vi. 16/2 There are two main types of insulin in clinical use, those with a rapid onset and short duration of action, and those whose action is slow in onset and lasts longer, the depot insulins.
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U.S. A railway station.
(In Great Britain formerly, and still sometimes, a goods station at a terminus: cf. sense 4a.)
[1830 Booth L’pool & M’chester Railway 46 This Railway will cost above £800,000 including the+stations and depots at each end. 1837 F. Whishaw Anal. Railways 286 When there are warehouses attached to a station the whole is called a depôt.] 1842 Longfellow in Life (1891) I. 415 To borrow the expression of a fellow-traveller, we were ‘ticketed through to the depot’ (pronouncing the last word so as to rhyme with teapot). 1861 Lowell Biglow P. Ser. ii. i. Poems 1890 II. 232 With all ou’ doors for deepot [rime teapot]. 1872 ‘Mark Twain’ Innoc. Abr. xii. 78 You cannot pass into the waiting-room of the depôt till you have secured your ticket. [1892 Camden Town Directory, 71 London and North-western Goods Depôt, Chalk Farm Road.] -
Fortif. (See quot.)
1823 in Crabb Techn. Dict. 1853 Stocqueler Milit. Encycl. s.v., In fortification, the term is likewise used to denote a particular place at the trail of the trenches, out of the reach of the cannon of a besieged place. It is here that besiegers generally assemble, when ordered to attack the outworks or support the troops in the trenches. -
attrib. (See spec. use in 3d.)
1881 Chicago Times 16 Apr., The company is constructing a depot building+at Leaf River. 1884 C. R. Markham in Pall Mall G. 20 Aug. 1/2 The party should never have been left without a depot ship wintering within accessible distance.
Also depot v. trans., to place in a depot.
1921 H. G. Ponting Gt. White South 274 When near the summit, Captain Scott told off four more of the party to depôt their surplus and return."