| public service | |
| —n | |
| 1. | a. government employment |
| b. the management and administration of the affairs of a political unit, esp the civil service | |
| 2. | a. a service provided for the community: buses provide a public service |
| b. (as modifier): a public-service announcement | |
| 3. | (Austral), (NZ) British equivalent: civil service the service responsible for the public administration of the government of a country. It excludes the legislative, judicial, and military branches. Members of the public service have no official political allegiance and are not generally affected by changes of governments |
| a gadget; dingus; thingumbob. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |