Noun

(en noun)

A fundamental principle or skill, especially in a field of learning (often in the plural).

We learn the rudiments of thermodynamics next week.

* Shakespeare

This boy is forest-born, / And hath been tutored in the rudiments / Of many desperate studies.

Something in an undeveloped form (often in the plural).

I have the rudiments of an escape plan.

* Milton

But I will bring thee where thou soon shalt quit / Those rudiments , and see before thine eyes / The monarchies of the earth.

* I. Taylor

The single leaf is the rudiment of beauty in landscape.

(biology) A body part that no longer has a function

(music) In percussion, one of a selection of basic drum patterns learned as an exercise.

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 .