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 .

Noun

(en noun)

The action of directing; pointing (something) or looking towards.

* 1835 , Sir , Sir (James Clark Ross), Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-west Passage …, Volume 1 , pp.284-5

Towards the following morning, the thermometer fell to 5°; and at daylight, there was not an atom of water to be seen in any direction .

Guidance, instruction.

The work of the director in cinema or theater; the skill of directing a film, play etc.

(archaic) An address.

* 1796 , , (The Monk) , Folio Society 1985, p. 218:

Her aunt Leonella was still at Cordova, and she knew not her direction .

The path or course of a given movement, or moving body; an indication of the point toward or from which an object is moving.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.}}

* 1900 , , (The House Behind the Cedars) , Chapter I,

Just before Warwick reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front Street from the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged, Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already his intention to walk in this direction .