DictionaryAI

director

noun
di-REK-tur/dɪˈɹɛktɚ/UKdi-REK-tuh/dɪˈɹɛktə(ɹ)/

Pluraldirectors

7 meanings of director

Practice

  1. 1
    person in chargenouncountable
    The person responsible for managing a department, project, or production such as a film or play.

    The film's director spent months reviewing each scene before its release.

    As director of engineering, he oversaw a team of forty.

    UsageOften director of a field (director of engineering) or after it (film director); as a title, often without the.

    Similarhead, manager, chief, supervisor, administrator

  2. 2
    board membernouncountable
    A member of a company's board of directors, the group that oversees the organization's management.

    The company appointed two new directors to strengthen its board.

    As a director on the company's board, she votes on major decisions such as mergers and the chief executive's pay.

    UsageOften board of directors, company director, non-executive director; a director sits on the board.

    Similartrustee, governor

    Note

    Here the director oversees the company, though executive directors also help run it. The word often appears in board of directors but also stands alone, as in company director or non-executive director, and a line in Anthony Trollope's Phineas Redux (1874) about "directors who know nothing and managers who know everything" captures the usual split: managers do the daily work, and directors sit above them. Keep this apart from the person running a department, who stands closer to the manager in that pairing.

  3. 3
    guiding thingnouncountable
    Something that guides, controls, or sets the direction of another thing.

    In her view, habit, not reason, is the true director of most of our daily choices.

    Hunger, more than any instinct for home, was the director of the herd's long journey south.

    Similarguide

    Note

    Here the agent suffix -or, which usually marks a person, names an object instead: direct + -or, a thing that does the directing. It sits comfortably in compounds that name what is being steered, such as a flow director installed over a brine return nozzle to channel the liquid. Its more specialized relatives, the antenna element and the gunnery fire-control device, name particular devices.

Practice

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Origin

The word looks like direct plus -or, but English actually took it from Middle French directeur and also from dīrēctor, the Late Latin word behind directeur, itself based on Latin dīrēctus.