director
noun
Simple meaning
A counselor, confessor, or spiritual guide.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dyrehkterSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
daɪˈɹɛktə(ɹ)
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
One who directs; the person in charge of managing a department or directorate (e.g., director of engineering), project, or production (as in a show or film, e.g., film director).
A counselor, confessor, or spiritual guide.
That which directs or orientates something.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: One who directs; the person in charge of managing a department or directorate (e.g., director of engineering), project, or production (as in a show or film, e.g., film director).
Used this way, director is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is an engineering use: it is a working term used for accuracy on the job.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
- Science
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use director
- “The director guided the actors through each scene carefully.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A pronouncement encouraging or banning some activity.
Without deviation.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The head of the United States Intelligence Community and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
A supervisor in a research center.
The responsibility of corporate directors to act in the best interests of stockholders.
A person responsible for the administration of a business.
The person who directs the making of a film.
One whose business is the management of funerals.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: one who directs
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API (CC BY-SA 3.0). Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.