instruction
noun
Simple meaning
An instance of the information or knowledge so furnished.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ihnstruhkshuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪnstˈɹʌkʃən
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
uncountable
The act of instructing, teaching, or providing with information or knowledge.
countable
An instance of the information or knowledge so furnished.
in the plural
A set of directions provided by a manufacturer for the users of a product or service.
countable
An order or command.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The act of instructing, teaching, or providing with information or knowledge.
Used this way, instruction is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in education or classroom contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Education/classroom
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
Share your sentence
Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
The activities of educating, teaching or instructing.
The activities of educating or instructing or teaching.
The profession of a teacher.
The activities of educating or instructing.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A manual usually accompanying a technical device and explaining how to install or operate it.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Related to a message describing how something is to be done.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A book of directions for using or operating some piece of equipment.
The process of carrying out an instruction by a computer.
A manual usually accompanying a technical device and explaining how to install or operate it.
A kind of computer architecture that has a large number of instructions hard coded into the CPU chip.
Education imparted in a series of lessons or meetings.
A single computer instruction that results in a series of instructions in machine language.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- instructornoun
- learningnoun
- addressnoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: instructing or teaching
Ask Vocabaura
Understand the word your way.
What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
Use it yourself
Knowing “instruction” starts when you use it. Pick a next step, all free.
Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.
