Crossword clues for dictate
dictate
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dictate \Dic"tate\, n. [L. dictatum. See Dictate, v. t.] A statement delivered with authority; an order; a command; an authoritative rule, principle, or maxim; a prescription; as, listen to the dictates of your conscience; the dictates of the gospel.
I credit what the Grecian dictates say.
--Prior.
Syn: Command; injunction; direction suggestion; impulse; admonition.
Dictate \Dic"tate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Dictated; p. pr. & vb. n. Dictating.] [L. dictatus, p. p. of dictare, freq. of dicere to say. See Diction, and cf. Dight.]
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To tell or utter so that another may write down; to inspire; to compose; as, to dictate a letter to an amanuensis.
The mind which dictated the Iliad.
--Wayland.Pages dictated by the Holy Spirit.
--Macaulay. -
To say; to utter; to communicate authoritatively; to deliver (a command) to a subordinate; to declare with authority; to impose; as, to dictate the terms of a treaty; a general dictates orders to his troops.
Whatsoever is dictated to us by God must be believed.
--Watts.Syn: To suggest; prescribe; enjoin; command; point out; urge; admonish.
Dictate \Dic"tate\, v. i.
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To speak as a superior; to command; to impose conditions (on).
Who presumed to dictate to the sovereign.
--Macaulay. -
To compose literary works; to tell what shall be written or said by another.
Sylla could not skill of letters, and therefore knew not how to dictate.
--Bacon.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1590s, "to practice dictation, say aloud for another to write down," from Latin dictatus, past participle of dictare "say often, prescribe," frequentative of dicere "tell, say" (see diction). Sense of "to command" is 1620s. Related: Dictated; dictates; dictating.
1590s, from Latin dictatum "something dictated," noun use of neuter past participle of dictare (see dictate (v.)).
Wiktionary
n. An order or command. vb. 1 To order, command, control. 2 To speak in order for someone to write down the words.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Dictate can refer to:
- Dictation (disambiguation)
- Dictator
- Edict
Usage examples of "dictate".
Yet as before, Adams remained reluctant to profess his love for her, though it was from the heart that he wrote: May Heaven permit you and me to enjoy the cool of the evening of life in tranquility, undisturbed by the cares of politics and war--and above all with the sweetest of all reflections that neither ambition, nor vanity, nor any base motive, or sordid passion through the whole course of great and terrible events that have attended it, have drawn us aside from the line of duty and the dictates of our consciences.
He cared nothing at all for Raoul, and would not have come to his aid had not the dictates of Adonian social society required it.
In three generations, perhaps only two, this gene, carrying its message to the Africans, dictated negative survival, meaning death.
I made use of the time to dictate some dispatches, and Antinous stretched out at my feet.
Such are the circumstances of this ostentatious and improbable relation, dictated, as it too plainly appears, by the vanity of the monarch, adorned by the unblushing servility of his flatterers, and received without contradiction by a distant and obsequious senate.
Further, when Sir Robert Appleton is away from home, he will make no attempt to dictate how his wife spends her time.
It had been no part of his plan to fight in the thickets of the Wilderness, and yet an adversary of but one-third his own strength was about to reverse his whole programme, and dictate the terms of the first battles of the campaign.
Southill in Bedfordshire, he was pleased to dictate it to me from memory.
The sound differed from the hiss of escaping air that she sometimes heard in the narrower passages where, in response to the dictates of Bernoulli, the constant zephyr freshened into something stronger.
We would save ourselves much trouble if we could agree that the proper place for most bioethical thought lies in counseling those affected, not in dictating the spectrum of possibilities.
In obedience to the dictates of the blindest prejudices and the most fatuous loyalties they did their utmost to kill men against whom they had no conceivable grievance, and they were in their turn butchered gallantly, fighting to the last.
Samut Khan led them to a small office where the Bokharan minister of foreign affairs was dictating to a Persian scribe.
The cohesiveness of the old sorcerers was such that it allowed them to become perceptually and physically everything the specific position of their assemblage points dictated.
The dictates of true policy dissuaded her from contributing to her further conquest in that kingdom, which would have proved the source of contention among the allies, depressed the house of Bourbon below the standard of importance which the balance of Europe required it should maintain, and aggrandize the states-general at the expense of Great Britain.
Thus Augustus, after all his fairer prospects had been snatched from him by untimely deaths, rested his last hopes on Tiberius, obtained for his adopted son the censorial and tribunitian powers, and dictated a law, by which the future prince was invested with an authority equal to his own, over the provinces and the armies.