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Dictation vs Dictate - What's the difference?

dictation | dictate | Derived terms |

Dictate is a derived term of dictation.



As nouns the difference between dictation and dictate

is that dictation is dictating, the process of speaking for someone else to write down the words while dictate is an order or command.

As a verb dictate is

to order, command, control.

dictation

English

Noun

  • (uncountable) Dictating, the process of speaking for someone else to write down the words
  • Since I learned shorthand, I can take dictation at eighty words a minute.
  • (countable) An activity in school where the teacher reads a passage aloud and the students write it down
  • 1908: Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables - We had reading and geography and Canadian history and dictation today.
  • (countable) The act of ordering or commanding
  • 1852:' Lysander Spooner, ''An Essay on the Trial by Jury'' - ...jurors in England have formerly understood it to be their right and duty to judge only according to their consciences, and not to submit to any ' dictation from the court, either as to law or fact.
  • (uncountable) Orders given in an overbearing manner
  • His habit, even with friends, was that of dictation .

    dictate

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An order or command.
  • I must obey the dictates of my conscience.

    Verb

    (dictat)
  • To order, command, control.
  • * 2001 , Sydney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography , Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0-521-78512-X), page 409,
  • Trademark Owners will nevertheless try to dictate how their marks are to be represented, but dictionary publishers with spine can resist such pressure.
  • To speak in order for someone to write down the words.
  • She is dictating a letter to a stenographer.
    The French teacher dictated a passage from Victor Hugo.

    Derived terms

    * dictation * dictator