VOCATION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does vocation mean? 

• VOCATION (noun)
  The noun VOCATION has 2 senses:

1. the particular occupation for which you are trained

2. a body of people doing the same kind of work

  Familiarity information: VOCATION used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VOCATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The particular occupation for which you are trained

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

calling; career; vocation

Hypernyms ("vocation" is a kind of...):

business; job; line; line of work; occupation (the principal activity in your life that you do to earn money)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vocation"):

specialisation; specialism; speciality; specialization; specialty (the special line of work you have adopted as your career)

lifework (the principal work of your career)

walk; walk of life (careers in general)

business life; professional life (a career in industrial or commercial or professional activities)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A body of people doing the same kind of work

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

occupational group; vocation

Hypernyms ("vocation" is a kind of...):

body (a group of persons associated by some common tie or occupation and regarded as an entity)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vocation"):

profession (the body of people in a learned occupation)

press corps (a group of journalists representing different publications who all cover the same topics)

 Context examples 

Do you think that literature is not at all my vocation?

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

"I am not fit for it: I have no vocation," I said.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I wanted her to tell me what they were; but she would only cross herself, and say she would never tell; that the ravings of the sick were the secrets of God, and that if a nurse through her vocation should hear them, she should respect her trust.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

"The vocation will fit you to a hair," I thought: "much good may it do you!"

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

One fitted to my purpose, you mean—fitted to my vocation.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Mr. St. John had said nothing to me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it became urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God's service—I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)