Other forms: dictated, dictates, dictating
To dictate is to command with no room for argument, or to speak text for somebody to write down. Dictate terms, dictate a letter, dictate the pace.
The commanding sense is disapproving: nobody dictates to me. The speaking sense is neutral and once described half of office work — a dictated letter, a dictaphone. Impersonally it means to determine: circumstances dictate, the budget dictates. Note dictation, which is both the exercise and the practice; and dictates as a noun, meaning the demands of something, as in the dictates of fashion.
1verbdictateTo command with no room for argument.
“The stronger country was able to dictate the terms of the peace.”
2verbspeakTo speak text for somebody to write down.
“The manager dictated a letter to her secretary.”
dictate is a commanding or speaking aloud.
Latin dictare is the frequentative of dicere, to say — to say repeatedly, which is exactly what dictating a letter is. Diktat, dictator and diction are the same root.
Proto-Indo-European
*deyḱ-
Latin
dictātum
English, today
dictate
Built from
Borrowed from Latin dictātum. 1581; Latin dictātum (“a thing said, something dictated”), substantivized from the nominative neuter singular of dictātus, the perfect passive participle of dictō (“pronounce or declare repeatedly; dictate”), frequentative of dīcō (“say, speak”). a doublet of diktat.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA