instruction

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act, practice, or profession of instructing.
2. n. Imparted knowledge.
3. n. An imparted or acquired item of knowledge; a lesson.
4. n. Computer Science A sequence of bits that tells a central processing unit to perform a particular operation and can contain data to be used in the operation.
5. n. An authoritative direction to be obeyed; an order. Often used in the plural: had instructions to be home by midnight.
6. n. Detailed directions on procedure: read the instructions for assembly.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of instructing or teaching; communication of knowledge; education; enlightenment.
2. n. Knowledge imparted; edifying discourse or precepts; teaching.
3. n. Direction given; order; command; mandate: commonly in the plural.
4. n. Synonyms 1 and 2. Training, Discipline, Nurture, Cultivation, Instruction, Teaching, Education; indoctrination, schooling, breeding, advice, counsel. Training is the development of the mind or character or both, or some faculty, at some length, by exercise, as a soldier is trained or drilled. Discipline is essentially the same as training, but more severe. Nurture, by its derivation, expresses a tender, continuous, and protracted training, beginning at an early age. Cultivation, in the active sense, is often used of the training, discipline, or development of some single department of the nature: as, the cultivation of the understanding, the taste, the conscience. (See culture.) Teaching is the general word for the imparting of knowledge: as, the profession of teaching. Instruction has the imparting of knowledge for its object, but emphasizes, more than teaching, the employment of orderly arrangement in the things taught. Tuition is the most external or formal of these words, representing the act. Education is the largest word of all the list, having for its object, like training and discipline, the development of the powers of the man, but generally also a symmetrical development of the whole man, the mind and the moral nature, by instruction, exercise, etc. Education is the word chosen to express the best ideas that men have of the process of teaching and discipline that shall make the wisest, noblest, and most effective kind of man.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable The act of instructing, teaching, or furnishing with information or knowledge.
2. n. countable An instance of the information or knowledge so furnished.
3. n. countable An order or command.
4. n. computing A single operation of a processor defined by an instruction set architecture.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of instructing, teaching, or furnishing with knowledge; information.
2. n. That which instructs, or with which one is instructed; the intelligence or information imparted.
3. n. Precept; information; teachings.
4. n. Direction; order; command.
5. n. (Computers) a segment of coded data that is interpreted by a computer as a command to perform an operation or series of operations. The term instruction is applied to both the electronic form of data as represented in and executed by the computer, and to any line of written computer code which is interpreted as one instruction by a compiler. A computer program is comprised of one or more instructions.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a message describing how something is to be done
2. n. (computer science) a line of code written as part of a computer program
3. n. the activities of educating or instructing; activities that impart knowledge or skill
4. n. the profession of a teacher