instruct
Formsinstructs, instructing, instructed
Formsinstructs, instructing, instructed
Pluralinstructs
- 1To teach someone a skill or subject by giving them directions and explanations.
Veteran pilots instruct cadets in emergency procedures during the final training week.
A master craftsman instructed his apprentices in the art of joinery.
Note
Two constructions carry this sense. You instruct someone in a subject or duty, as Aphra Behn's father 'needs to be instructed in his Duty', or you instruct someone how to do something. The verb can also stand without any object. Samuel Johnson's Rambler of 1751 says the design of tragedy is 'to instruct by moving the passions', meaning to teach in the broadest way.
- 2To tell someone what they are required or expected to do.
The judge instructed the jury to disregard the witness's outburst.
Headquarters will instruct field agents on the new protocol.
Note
Here the teaching drops away and only the directing remains. On a scale of force it sits between advise and order: weightier than a suggestion, less blunt than a command. It usually takes an object and a to-infinitive (instructed me to keep my arm still). It is at home in the passive, as when Thackeray's servants in Vanity Fair 'were instructed to address her as Mum'.
- 3To formally appoint your own lawyer and give them directions on how to act on a particular legal matter.
The company instructed lawyers to begin proceedings against its former supplier.
Before the hearing, she chose to instruct an experienced attorney.
Similarretain, engage, hire, brief, appoint
Note
Legal English turns the usual direction around. The client does the instructing, and the professional is the object: you instruct a solicitor or a firm of lawyers. Giving those directions is itself the act of hiring, so 'we have instructed lawyers' announces an appointment, not merely a conversation. The matter in dispute follows with over, as in 'instruct a solicitor over this'.
Less common meanings
- 4Having been taught or enlightened; possessing knowledge gained through teaching.
Who ever by consulting at thy shrine Return’d the wiser, or the more instruct To flye or follow what concern’d him most, And run not sooner to his fatal snare?
1671, John Milton, Paradise RegainedNote
The mental counterpart of the 'furnished' adjective: the same bare participle, applied to a mind supplied with knowledge rather than a ship with oars. Modern English would say instructed or better informed. John Milton's Paradise Regained (1671) asks who ever came back from a shrine 'the wiser, or the more instruct'. Paired with wiser and graded with more, it reads as a plain adjective.
- 5The act of teaching, or guidance given through teaching.
Note
A noun made from the bare verb, now long out of use. Where an older writer might wait for further instruct, a modern one says instruction. It even took a plural, instructs, much as instruction takes instructions. Anyone reviving it should do so knowingly, for period color. In ordinary prose it will read as a slip for the verb.
- 6Arranged, furnished, or provided with what is required.
The fortress, instruct with provisions and arms, could withstand a long siege.
For he had neither ship, instruct with oares, Nor men to fetch him from those stranger shores.
c. 1615, George Chapman, Homer’s OdyssesNote
A sense that keeps the Latin's practical meaning. Īnstrūctus is the participle of īnstruō, which meant 'arrange, furnish, provide' as well as 'instruct'. The English adjective is that participle borrowed without an -ed ending, and it describes things fitted out for use. George Chapman's Homer's Odysses (c. 1615) gives a ship 'instruct with oares', with with naming what it is supplied with.
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Practice
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Origin
From Latin instructus, the perfect passive participle of instruo, meaning "I instruct; I arrange, furnish, or provide."