guide

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One who shows the way by leading, directing, or advising.
2. n. One who serves as a model for others, as in a course of conduct.
3. n. A person employed to conduct others, as through a museum, and give information about points of interest encountered.
4. n. Something, such as a pamphlet, that offers basic information or instruction: a shopper's guide.
5. n. A guidebook.
6. n. Something that serves to direct or indicate.
7. n. A device, such as a ruler, tab, or bar, that serves as an indicator or acts to regulate a motion or operation.
8. n. A soldier stationed at the right or left of a column of marchers to control alignment, show direction, or mark the point of pivot.
9. v. To serve as a guide for; conduct.
10. v. To direct the course of; steer: guide a ship through a channel.
11. v. To exert control or influence over.
12. v. To supervise the training or education of.
13. v. To serve as a guide.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To show the way to; lead or conduct.
2. To direct or regulate; manage; give direction to; control.
3. To use; treat.
4. Synonyms and
5. 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.
6. n. 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.
7. n. One who or that which determines or directs another in his conduct or course of action; a director; a regulator.
8. n. 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.
9. n. One of the non-commissioned officers or other enlisted men who take positions to mark the pivots, marches, formations, and alinements in modern discipline.
10. n. A guide-book.
11. n. In mining: A cross-course.
12. n. plural Same as cage-guides.
13. n. 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. Specifically— In printing: A flat movable rule, or other device, used by type-setters to mark place on their copy. A projection on the feed-board or laying-on board of a printing-press which determines the correct position of a sheet to be printed.
14. n. In music: The subject or dux of a fugue.
15. n. A direct.
16. n. 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.
17. n. 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
18. n. 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.

Wiktionary

1. n. Someone who guides, especially someone hired to show people around a place or an institution and offer information and explanation.
2. n. A document or book that offers information or instruction; guidebook.
3. n. A sign that guides people; guidepost.
4. n. Any marking or object that catches the eye to provide quick reference.
5. n. A device that guides part of a machine, or guides motion or action.
6. n. occult A spirit believed to speak through a medium.
7. n. military A member of a group marching in formation who sets the pattern of movement or alignment for the rest.
8. v. to serve as a guide for someone or something.
9. v. to steer or navigate, especially a ship or as a pilot.
10. v. to exert control or influence over someone or something.
11. v. to supervise the education or training of someone.
12. v. intransitive to act as a guide.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To lead or direct in a way; to conduct in a course or path; to pilot.
2. v. To regulate and manage; to direct; to order; to superintend the training or education of; to instruct and influence intellectually or morally; to train.
3. n. 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.
4. n. One who, or that which, directs another in his conduct or course of life; a director; a regulator.
5. n. 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.
6. n. (Water Wheels) A blade or channel for directing the flow of water to the wheel buckets.
7. n. (Surgery) A grooved director for a probe or knife.
8. n. (Printing) A strip or device to direct the compositor's eye to the line of copy he is setting.
9. n. (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.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. pass over, across, or through
2. n. someone who shows the way by leading or advising
3. v. direct the course; determine the direction of travelling
4. n. someone who can find paths through unexplored territory
5. n. a structure or marking that serves to direct the motion or positioning of something
6. n. someone employed to conduct others
7. v. be a guiding or motivating force or drive
8. v. use as a guide
9. n. something that offers basic information or instruction
10. n. a model or standard for making comparisons
11. v. take somebody somewhere