dictates

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of dictate.

   The board dictates the company's spending limits for the year.

   Common courtesy dictates that you reply to a written invitation.

   Note

   One spelling covers all three verb meanings, and the construction usually shows which is meant. Someone who dictates to an assistant is speaking words for another person to write down. A rule that dictates that something happen is deciding the outcome. An authority that dictates terms is giving orders. After I, you, we or they, the form drops the -s and is plain dictate.

   She dictates her letters to an assistant every morning.

   The manager dictates while his secretary types.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of dictate.

   Soldiers are expected to obey the dictates of their commanding officers.

   He arranged his whole life around the dictates of his religion.

   Note

   Here the noun means orders, and it most often sits in the frame the dictates of, followed by a source of authority: conscience, reason, custom, a commanding officer. The same spelling serves the present-tense verb, so the grammar has to tell them apart. In the dictates of conscience, the word names the orders; in conscience dictates, conscience is the one giving them.

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