guide

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun One who shows the way by leading, directing, or advising.
• noun One who serves as a model for others, as in a course of conduct.
• noun A person employed to conduct others, as through a museum, and give information about points of interest encountered.
• noun Something, such as a pamphlet, that offers basic information or instruction.
• noun A guidebook.
• noun Something that serves to direct or indicate.
• noun A device, such as a ruler, tab, or bar, that serves as an indicator or acts to regulate a motion or operation.
• noun A soldier stationed at the right or left of a column of marchers to control alignment, show direction, or mark the point of pivot.
• intransitive verb To serve as a guide for; conduct.
• intransitive verb To direct the course of; steer.
• intransitive verb To exert control or influence over; direct.
• intransitive verb To supervise the training or education of.
• intransitive verb To serve as a guide.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To show the way to; lead or conduct.
• To direct or regulate; manage; give direction to; control.
• To use; treat.
• Synonyms and
• Guide, Direct, Sway; manage, control, pilot, steer. Guide implies that the person guiding accompanies or precedes, while direct need not mean more than that he gives instructions, which may be from a distance. The figurative uses of these words are not far from the same meanings. Direct may imply that we must reflect and exercise judgment, guide that we trustingly follow where we are led; but direct also means to exercise absolute authority: as, he directed all the movements of the army by telegraph from the seat of government. Sway in this connection is used of some influence, often bad and always strong, which turns us aside from what otherwise might have been our course, and in this sense is nearly equal to bias. (See comparison under authority.) We are guided or directed by principle or reason, or by a real friend, and swayed by our passions or feelings, or by unwise or unworthy associates.
• noun plural In an engine, the rods on which, or the surfaces between which, the cross-head of the piston slides: usually called cross-head guides.
• noun In surgery: A filiform bougie passed through a stricture of the urethra or other canal, over which a tunneled sound of larger size is passed. See tunneled
• noun A sound grooved in its convexity, which is passed through the urethra into the bladder and against which the point of the knife is directed in operations upon the prostatic urethra.
• noun One who leads or directs another or others in a way or course; a conductor; specifically, one engaged in the business of guiding; a person familiar with a region, town, public building, etc., who is employed to lead strangers, as travelers or tourists, to or through it.
• noun One who or that which determines or directs another in his conduct or course of action; a director; a regulator.
• noun Milit.: One resident in or otherwise familiar with the neighborhood where an army is encamped in time of war, employed or forced to give intelligence concerning the country, and especially about the roads by which an enemy may approach. The guides accompany headquarters.
• noun One of the non-commissioned officers or other enlisted men who take positions to mark the pivots, marches, formations, and alinements in modern discipline.
• noun A guide-book.
• noun In mining: A cross-course.
• noun plural Same as cage-guides.
• noun Something intended to direct or keep to a course or motion; a contrivance for regulating progressive motion or action: as, a sewing-machine guide. See guide-bar, guide-rail, etc.
• noun In music: The subject or dux of a fugue.
• noun A direct.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To lead or direct in a way; to conduct in a course or path; to pilot.
• transitive verb To regulate and manage; to direct; to order; to superintend the training or education of; to instruct and influence intellectually or morally; to train.
• noun A person who leads or directs another in his way or course, as in a strange land; one who exhibits points of interest to strangers; a conductor; also, that which guides; a guidebook.
• noun One who, or that which, directs another in his conduct or course of life; a director; a regulator.
• noun Any contrivance, especially one having a directing edge, surface, or channel, for giving direction to the motion of anything, as water, an instrument, or part of a machine, or for directing the hand or eye, as of an operator.
• noun (Water Wheels) A blade or channel for directing the flow of water to the wheel buckets.
• noun (Surgery) A grooved director for a probe or knife.
• noun (Printing) A strip or device to direct the compositor's eye to the line of copy he is setting.
• noun (Mil.) A noncommissioned officer or soldier placed on the directing flank of each subdivision of a column of troops, or at the end of a line, to mark the pivots, formations, marches, and alignments in tactics.
• noun (Mach.) the part of a steam engine on which the crosshead slides, and by which the motion of the piston rod is kept parallel to the cylinder, being a substitute for the parallel motion; -- called also guide, and slide bar.
• noun (Steam Engine) a block attached in to the crosshead to work in contact with the guide bar.
• noun (Surveying) See under Meridian.
• noun (Engin.) a pile driven to mark a place, as a point to work to.
• noun (Mach.) a pulley for directing or changing the line of motion of belt; an idler.
• noun (Railroads) an additional rail, between the others, gripped by horizontal driving wheels on the locomotive, as a means of propulsion on steep gradients.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Someone who guides, especially someone hired to show people around a place or an institution and offer information and explanation.