instruct

UK/ɪnˈstɹʌkt/US/ɪnˈstɹʌkt/

verbB22 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,536 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: instructed, instructs, instructing

To instruct is to tell somebody officially what to do — or to teach them. The same word for an order and a lesson.

The order sense is formal and legal, so being instructed to attend leaves no choice, and a client instructs a solicitor, which is the technical term for hiring one. The teaching sense is older, and instructing somebody in a skill means training them properly. The noun instruction covers both. Which sense you are reading is nearly always clear from whether a task or a subject follows.

Definitions of instruct

1verbinstructTo tell someone officially to do something.B2
“Staff were instructed to report the fault at once.”
formal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
2verbteachTo teach someone a subject or skill.B2
“He instructed new recruits in map reading.”

Where it comes from

To instruct is to furnish. Latin īnstruō meant to arrange, to equip or to provide quite as much as to teach, so a taught person had been fitted out for the job.

Proto-Indo-European
*strew-
Latin
īnstrūctus
English, today
instruct

Built from

īnstruō · Latin — I instruct; I arrange, furnish, or provide

From Latin īnstrūctus, perfect passive participle of īnstruō (“I instruct; I arrange, furnish, or provide”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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