direction

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or function of directing.
2. n. Management, supervision, or guidance of an action or operation.
3. n. The art or action of musical or theatrical directing.
4. n. Music A word or phrase in a score indicating how a passage is to be played or sung.
5. n. An instruction or series of instructions for doing or finding something. Often used in the plural.
6. n. An authoritative indication; an order or command.
7. n. The distance-independent relationship between two points in space that specifies the angular position of either with respect to the other; the relationship by which the alignment or orientation of any position with respect to any other position is established.
8. n. A position to which motion or another position is referred.
9. n. A line leading to a place or point.
10. n. The line or course along which a person or thing moves.
11. n. The statement in degrees of the angle measured between due north and a given line or course on a compass.
12. n. A course or area of development; a tendency toward a particular end or goal: charting a new direction for the company.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Relative position considered without regard to linear distance. The direction of a point, A, from another point, B, is or is not the same as the direction of a point, C, from another point, D, according as a straight line drawn from B through A and continued to infinity would or would not cut thecelestial sphereat the same point as a straight line drawn from D through C and also continued to infinity. Every motion of a point has a determinate direction; for if any motion from any instant were to lose all curvature, it would tend toward a determinate point of the celestial sphere, which would define its direction at the instant when it ceased to be deflected. It is inaccurate to say that a line has a determinate direction, because a motion along that line has either one of two opposite directions. Yet the word direction is sometimes used in a loose sense in which, opposite directions not being distinguished, the direction of a line is spoken of, meaning the pair of opposite directions.
2. n. The act of governing; administration; management; guidance; superintendence: as, the direction of public affairs, of domestic concerns, of a bank, of conscience; to study under the direction of a tutor.
3. n. The act of directing, aiming, pointing, or applying: as, the direction of good works to a good end.
4. n. The end or object toward which something is directed.
5. n. An order; a prescription, either verbal or written; instruction in what manner to proceed.
6. n. In equity pleading, that part of the bill containing the address to the court.
7. n. In music, the act or office of a conductor or director.
8. n. A superscription, as on a letter or package, directing to whom and where it is to be sent; an address.
9. n. A body or board of directors; a directorate.
10. n. In astrology, the difference of right or oblique ascension between the significator and promotor.
11. n. In mech.: The line in which a body moves or tends to proceed, according to the force impressed upon it. Thus, if a body falls freely by gravity, its line of direction is a line perpendicular to the horizon, or one which, if produced, would pass through the earth's center.
12. n. A line drawn from the center of gravity of any body perpendicular to the horizon.
13. n. Synonyms Oversight, government, control.

Wiktionary

1. n. The action of directing; pointing (something) towards.
2. n. Guidance, instruction.
3. n. The work of the director in cinema or theater; the skill of directing a film, play etc.
4. n. archaic An address.
5. n. The path or course of a given movement, or moving body; an indication of the point toward which an object is moving.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of directing, of aiming, regulating, guiding, or ordering; guidance; management; superintendence; administration.
2. n. That which is imposed by directing; a guiding or authoritative instruction; prescription; order; command.
3. n. The name and residence of a person to whom any thing is sent, written upon the thing sent; superscription; address.
4. n. The line or course upon which anything is moving or aimed to move, or in which anything is lying or pointing; aim; line or point of tendency; direct line or course.
5. n. The body of managers of a corporation or enterprise; board of directors.
6. n. (Gun.) The pointing of a piece with reference to an imaginary vertical axis; -- distinguished from elevation. The direction is given when the plane of sight passes through the object.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a line leading to a place or point
2. n. a message describing how something is to be done
3. n. something that provides direction or advice as to a decision or course of action
4. n. the spatial relation between something and the course along which it points or moves
5. n. a general course along which something has a tendency to develop
6. n. a formal statement of a command or injunction to do something
7. n. the concentration of attention or energy on something
8. n. the act of managing something
9. n. the act of setting and holding a course