a particular charge or trust, or a dignity attended with a public function. See Honour.—The word is primarily used in speaking of the offices of judicature and policy; as the office of secretary of state, the office of a sheriff, of a justice of peace, &c.

Office also signifies a place or apartment appointed for officers to attend in, in order to discharge their respective duties and employments; as the secretary's office, ordnance-office, excise-office, signet-office, paper-office, pipe-office, six-clerks office, &c.

architecture, denotes all the apartments appointed for the necessary occasions of a palace or great house; as kitchen, pantries, confectionaries, &c.

the canon-law, is used for a benefice that has no jurisdiction annexed to it.

Duty upon Offices and Penions, a branch of the king's extraordinary perpetual revenue, consisting in a payment of £s. in the pound (over and above all other duties) out of all salaries, fees, and perquisites, of offices and penions payable by the crown. This highly-popular taxation was imposed by Stat. 3 Geo. II. c. 22, and is under the direction of the commissioners of the land-tax.