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instruction

noun

Simple meaning

An instance of the information or knowledge so furnished.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ihnstruhkshuhn

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US device voice
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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. uncountable

    The act of instructing, teaching, or providing with information or knowledge.

  2. countable

    An instance of the information or knowledge so furnished.

  3. in the plural

    A set of directions provided by a manufacturer for the users of a product or service.

  4. 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.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

instruction setdirect instructionreligious instructionpublic instructionreading instructionlanguage instructionclassroom instructionmoral instruction

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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?

Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.

Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • instructionsnounPlural form

    A manual usually accompanying a technical device and explaining how to install or operate it.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • instructionaladjectiveDerived adjective

    Related to a message describing how something is to be done.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • instruction booknounCompound term

    A book of directions for using or operating some piece of equipment.

  • instruction executionnounCompound term

    The process of carrying out an instruction by a computer.

  • instruction manualnounCompound term

    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.

  • course of instructionnounCompound term

    Education imparted in a series of lessons or meetings.

  • macro instructionnounCompound term

    A single computer instruction that results in a series of instructions in machine language.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: instructing or teaching

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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.