What's the difference between dictate and diction?

Dictate


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To tell or utter so that another may write down; to inspire; to compose; as, to dictate a letter to an amanuensis.
  • (v. t.) To say; to utter; to communicate authoritatively; to deliver (a command) to a subordinate; to declare with authority; to impose; as, to dictate the terms of a treaty; a general dictates orders to his troops.
  • (v. i.) To speak as a superior; to command; to impose conditions (on).
  • (v. i.) To compose literary works; to tell what shall be written or said by another.
  • (v. t.) A statement delivered with authority; an order; a command; an authoritative rule, principle, or maxim; a prescription; as, listen to the dictates of your conscience; the dictates of the gospel.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is my desperate hope that we close out of town.” In the book, God publishes his own 'It Getteth Better' video and clarifies his original writings on homosexuality: I remember dictating these lines to Moses; and afterward looking up to find him staring at me in wide-eyed astonishment, and saying, "Thou do knowest that when the Israelites read this, they're going to lose their fucking shit, right?"
  • (2) There are many examples to support his assertion, yet for the most part, it is celebrities who dictate what images can be published and what stories should be told.
  • (3) Dictated by underlying physicochemical constraints, deceived at times by the lulling tones of the siren entropy, and constantly vulnerable to the vagaries of other more pervasive forms of biological networking and information transfer encoded in the genes of virus and invading microorganisms, protein biorecognition in higher life forms, and particularly in mammals, represents the finely tuned molecular avenues for the genome to transfer its information to the next generation.
  • (4) In Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia – three countries that toppled three dictators nearly four years ago – 2014 marked something of a comeback for the concept of strongman leadership.
  • (5) Ernst had adopted conservative positions during the primary battle: she called the president a dictator and said the Environmental Protection Agency should be abolished.
  • (6) Some objected, saying we should not admit a dictator's son.
  • (7) A popular strain of foreign policy thought has long held that the US should be guided primarily by self-interest rather than human rights concerns: hence, since the US wants its Fifth Fleet to remain in Bahrain and believes ( with good reason ) that these dictators will serve US interests far better than if popular will in these countries prevails, it is right to prop up these autocrats.
  • (8) The "size principle" is known to dictate the sequence of recruitment of motor neurons during voluntary or reflex activation of muscles.
  • (9) Thus, cleavage site selection is likely to be dictated by specific noncovalent DNA-protein interactions.
  • (10) "Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raúl Castro , it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican Congress member in Florida, told the US secretary of state, John Kerry.
  • (11) Aldi is able to order this selection, more than 90% of which is own-label products, through bulk-buying, while dictating the package size in order to fit the maximum amount of goods on its shelves and lorries in order to keep costs low.
  • (12) This choice was made on the basis of a clinical and angiographic estimate of the possible consequences of vessel occlusion, or dictated by sound inoperability of the patient.
  • (13) This unusual nature dictates an enhanced awareness for proper management.
  • (14) said a colleague, referring to the former Chadian dictator, who had been living in gilded exile in Dakar since his overthrow in December 1990.
  • (15) North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is also aware of the fate of other dictators who lacked nuclear weapons or were forced to give them up.
  • (16) Jason Kreis and the unremarkable success of Real Salt Lake Read more Kreis had built a serial playoff team in Salt Lake by defining a philosophical approach to the churning personnel turnover that the league’s roster-building restrictions tend to dictate.
  • (17) Combat conditions or mass casualty situations may dictate a delay in surgery because of higher priorities or lack of surgical facilities.
  • (18) So, logic would dictate that if Greeks are genuinely in favour of reform – and opinion polls have consistently shown wide support for many of the structural changes needed – they would be foolish to give these two parties another chance.
  • (19) Plibersek’s spokesman said on Friday: “Who is Mr Brandis to dictate the language on the Middle East peace negotiations?” The spokesman said the intervention this week amounted to “another foreign policy embarrassment for the Abbott government, which is why [Brandis] was forced by the foreign minister and the Foreign Affairs Department to rush out a statement about his inept pronouncements.” Labor ran into its own controversy earlier this year when Bill Shorten appeared to telegraph a shift in policy around the description of settlements in a major speech to the Zionist Federation of Australia.
  • (20) Killian Fox Growing your own: the basics What you decide to plant will be somewhat dictated by the space you have.

Diction


Definition:

  • (n.) Choice of words for the expression of ideas; the construction, disposition, and application of words in discourse, with regard to clearness, accuracy, variety, etc.; mode of expression; language; as, the diction of Chaucer's poems.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The prose rhythm and colloquial diction here work against exaggeration, but allow for humour.
  • (2) The enigmatic patience of the sentences, the pedantic syntax, the peculiar antiquity of the diction, the strange recessed distance of the writing, in which everything seems milky and sub-aqueous, just beyond reach – all of this gives Sebald his particular flavour, so that sometimes it seems that we are reading not a particular writer but an emanation of literature.
  • (3) If you ever feel tempted to say "status quo" or "cul de sac", for instance, Orwell will sneer at you for "pretentious diction".
  • (4) Now 86, Daddy – the 11th Duke of Marlborough - has the garbled, sticky plum crumble diction of the irredeemably posh.
  • (5) He turns his ­attention to today's male movie stars and their ­penchant for mumbling (Hopkins has always prided himself on his diction).
  • (6) Discriminant analyses, using both untransformed and range-corrected data made excellent post-dictions of group membership.
  • (7) Americans don't have passports, we don't meet many foreigners, and we think proper English diction is an indicator of condescension or homosexuality.
  • (8) The diction of the original tells us that its author was, broadly speaking, a northerner.
  • (9) It's a beautifully musical film all the way through, in fact, partly an effect of Katie Johnson's delivery as Mrs W : incredible gentle diction, all sweet bleats and trilly intonation.
  • (10) Only his co-host, Loyd Grossman, had a voice and diction to, if anything, rival Frost's own.
  • (11) This section was presented by Loyd Grossman, whose diction and presenting style were even more distinctive than Frost's.
  • (12) Nor could the chosen diction of the American have been further from the socially diagnostic wit of Jane Austen or the stuffed-pudding plenitude of the young Dickens.
  • (13) In one letter (to her parents), she raved about Michael Redgrave's Hamlet saying it made Olivier's 'beautiful diction, dramatic pauses, loud music and despairing cries sound like pure unadulterated ham'.
  • (14) Diction and fractures of resin teeth were more common problems in maxillae; cheek and lip biting was a more frequent postinsertion complication in the treatment of mandibles.
  • (15) Sebald's seemingly passive prose was in fact – to borrow Marianne Moore's memorable phrase – "diction galvanised against inertia".
  • (16) With the Instagram posts showing no sign of stopping we’ve come up with a short guide to the Chechen ruler’s dramatic diction to help you understand who the “dastardly villains” are; what threat they pose to “the nation that rose from its knees”.
  • (17) But I never really responded to the antique diction and syntax - it struck me at times as even older than the original.
  • (18) Twain would have been apoplectic at the presumption: one of the letters he included in his drafts, reprinted in the autobiography's first volume, is a rebuke to an editor who dared to alter the great man's diction in his essay on Joan of Arc .
  • (19) He takes his 19th-century Gothic diction from the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter , and a fair amount of his obsessive extremism from the Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard .
  • (20) The tennis player Annabel Croft, when meeting her genuinely homeless "buddy" David, said, with the immaculate diction of a woman regarding the drinks tray at a garden party: "I have been very nervous about who I was going to meet but I'm pleasantly surprised!"