diktatdisapproving

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Instructions and orders
as per instructionsidiom
brief
briefing
briefing paper
charge
clarion call
command
commandment
directive
doctor's orders
fiat
imperatively
interdict
marching orders
stipulation
talk
talk someone through something
unbriefed
walkthrough
word

dictate | American Dictionary

dictate
verb
us/ˈdɪk·teɪt, dɪkˈteɪt/

dictateverb (GIVE ORDERS)

[ T ]
to give orders, or state something with total authority:
[ + question word ]Tennis club rules dictate what kind of footwear may be worn on the courts.
[ T ]
To dictate also means to make necessary:
The characteristics of the land dictate much of what can be built.

dictateverb (SPEAK)

[ I/T ]
to say something aloud for another person or for a machine to record, so that your words can be prepared in writing for use in business or a legal case:
[ T ]She spent the morning dictating letters.

dictate | Business English

dictate
verb
uk /dɪkˈteɪt/us
[ I or T ] WORKPLACE
to speak something aloud for a person or machine to record, so that what is said can be written down:
dictate a letter/memo/reply to sbI dictated a memo to my assistant, to be sent to all staff.
[ T ]
to decide and say what will happen, usually in a forceful way:
dictate terms/conditionsAt that time the trade unions were allowed to dictate terms, and nothing happened without their agreement.
dictate how/when/what, etc.The government shouldn't dictate how we run our businesses.
[ T ]
to influence something or make it necessary:
The rise in fuel prices was dictated by the market.

Examples of dictate

dictate
Emulation of foreign models was always tempered by patriotic priorities and the dictates of local circumstances, necessarily resulting in intellectual hybridity.
What is certain is that in cases where judiciary is true to the dictates of its law, the extra-judicial sphere gets activated.
They do so by imposing rules dictating the individual steps in the interaction and the information revealed by the agents during the interaction.
The paper noted that educational reforms in the country are dictated down from the authorities with little input from the public at large.
The relevance of public opinion thus dictates a need to understand its underpinnings.
We organize the empirical analysis around four categories of variables and use representative variables for each category as dictated by theory and data availability.
The shape of the discussion is then dictated pragmatically.
The portfolio of chemokines produced dictates which cell types are recruited locally, culminating in either resistance or susceptibility to infection.
The sur face current density is dictated by the boundary conditions on the sur face of the plume slab.
Thus, (43c) and (43d) are instances of the same process, with the collapse able to proceed further in (43c), as dictated by recoverability.
Inasmuch as fairness dictates that our laws not exceed our abilities, it precludes the direct legislation of virtuous motivations.
The norms of security dictated that these visits be conducted by more than one person.
However, the need for these rule types are primarily dictated by the restrictions that we have placed on the pointwise rule.
The sample was broken down into five age categories which were dictated by available data for the population at large.
In general, their geographical location dictated the type of service offered.
See all examples of dictate
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.