Guidance is help and advice about what to do. Seek guidance, under her guidance, official guidance.
It is uncountable — a piece of guidance, not a guidance. In institutions, guidance means published advice that is recommended rather than compulsory, which is the distinction from a rule, and a great deal turns on it. Note guidance counsellor, the American school role; guidance system, meaning the technology that steers a missile or a spacecraft; and that guidance is gentler than instruction and firmer than a suggestion.
1nounguidanceHelp and advice about what to do.
“The guidance runs to ninety pages and answers nothing.”
2nountechnologyThe technology that steers something.
“The missile's guidance system steered it towards the target.”
guidance is direction or advice.
The word is guide plus -ance, a French ending English attached to a French verb. Guide itself goes back to a Germanic root meaning to know, so guidance is help from somebody who knows the way.
Frankish
*wītan
Old Occitan
guida
Old French
guide
Middle English
guide
English
guide
English, today
guidance
From guide + ance. Displaced native lādtēowdōm. guide comes from Middle English guide, from Old French guide, from Old Occitan guida, from guidar, from Frankish wītan. c. 1325–75. From Middle English guide, from the Old French guide, from Old Occitan guida, from guidar, from Frankish wītan (“to show the way, lead”), from Proto-Germanic wītaną (“to see, know; go, depart”), from Proto-Indo-European weyd- (“to see, know”). Cognate with Old English wītan (“to see, take heed to, watch after, guard, keep”). Related also to English wit.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA