directions

noun

plural of direction
1
as in instructions
a statement of what to do that must be obeyed by those concerned we were given very specific directions for the first part of the exam

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in managements
the act or activity of looking after and making decisions about something working under the close direction of the engineering supervisor

Synonyms & Similar Words
3
as in compasses
a guiding or motivating purpose or principle a life that seemed to lack any direction other than the mindless pursuit of empty pleasures

Synonyms & Similar Words
4
as in trends
a prevailing or general movement or inclination some older people worry about the overall direction that political discourse has taken lately

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of directions If people are working from different assumptions, stop and clarify the system before everyone charges off in opposite directions. — Tarot.com, New York Daily News, 1 Sep. 2026 On an infinite graph — an abstraction where the graph extends forever in all directions — one or several infinite seas will dominate. — Leila Sloman, Quanta Magazine, 31 Aug. 2026 The PrSM is designed to explode midair and propel tens of thousands of dense metal pellets at high speed in all directions. — Julia Frankel, Los Angeles Times, 31 Aug. 2026 Less saved than the generation before it, no pension underneath, and obligations pointing in both directions at once. — Jon Sabes, Fortune, 30 Aug. 2026 That shift, from manufacturing static objects to manufacturing objects capable of adapting, could ultimately make 4D printing one of the more interesting directions in the evolution of additive manufacturing. — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 30 Aug. 2026 It has also been tested to work seamlessly in the right and left hands, plus in different directions and angles. — Celia Shatzman, Forbes.com, 23 Aug. 2026 The Moon opposes Mars early, making impatience easier to trigger when comfort and action pull in different directions. — Tarot.com, Hartford Courant, 23 Aug. 2026 Then the musical group collated the various streets, roads, places, drives, boulevards and cardinal directions into 53 seconds of gold. — Doug Turnbull, AJC.com, 23 Aug. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for directions
  1. instructions
  2. managements
  3. compasses
  4. trends
  5. orders
  6. operations
  7. purposes
  8. tendencies
Noun
  • All fungicides should be used cautiously and according to the label instructions.
    — Leanne Potts, Better Homes & Gardens, 30 Aug. 2026
  • Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have uncovered a new processor attack that can bypass defenses in Intel and AMD chips by exploiting a security gap lasting only a handful of instructions.
    — Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 28 Aug. 2026
Definition of instructions
Noun
  • Most managements feel that the — on the price of their shares — that the higher, the better.
    — Alex Crippen, CNBC, 9 Aug. 2026
  • These are different eras, and the respective managements are no longer the same, but something about this feels off.
    — Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 8 May 2026
Definition of managements
Noun
  • The prevailing motifs include Anglo-American boarding schools and college campuses, accoutrements with a romantic aura (billowing sleeves, melting candles), and analog artifacts (old compasses, monocles).
    — Sophia Zhang, Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 July 2026
  • So many role-playing games spoonfeed you with compasses and waypoints and fourth-wall-breaking warnings.
    — Alex James Kane, Forbes.com, 22 May 2026
Definition of compasses
Noun
  • Recent trends are driving conversations among health officials about how to better track the consequences of a surging problem.
    — Arkansas Online, Arkansas Online, 30 Aug. 2026
  • Nostalgia is one of the fastest-growing trends in the home design space right now.
    — Kristina McGuirk, Better Homes & Gardens, 30 Aug. 2026
Definition of trends
Noun
  • Although the company didn’t provide a detailed breakdown of orders, the tweet offers a glimpse into customer support volume.
    — Michael Kan, PC Magazine, 25 Aug. 2026
  • Within the system, autonomous mobile robots called SymBots retrieve totes holding goods from storage before bringing them to a pick station where an operator can fulfill multiple orders simultaneously.
    — Glenn Taylor, Footwear News, 25 Aug. 2026
Definition of orders
Noun
  • Managers guide a roster constructed by their general manager or head of baseball operations.
    — Chandler Rome, New York Times, 31 Aug. 2026
  • Organizations need security operations capable of correlating multiple attack vectors, responding at machine speed and continuously learning from attacks occurring far beyond the walls of any single enterprise.
    — Emil Sayegh, Forbes.com, 30 Aug. 2026
Definition of operations
Noun
  • Anthropic wanted assurance that its technology would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance, and the DOD wanted Anthropic to grant the agency unfettered access to Claude across all lawful purposes.
    — Ashley Capoot, CNBC, 28 Aug. 2026
  • Governments generally don’t need a model that’s as powerful as what’s on the frontier to automate a few tasks; Ting explains that a tiny model, even one with as few as 1 billion parameters, can suit those purposes.
    — Nicholas Gordon, Fortune, 27 Aug. 2026
Definition of purposes
Noun
  • This sense of threat can trigger authoritarian tendencies, including support for taking away civil liberties like the ability to give public speeches or run for political office from disliked others.
    — Paul Djupe, The Conversation, 20 Aug. 2026
  • The New York Young Republicans Club’s Nazi tendencies are well known.
    — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 20 Aug. 2026
Definition of tendencies

Browse Nearby Words

directionless
directions
directive
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Cite this Entry

“Directions.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/directions. Accessed 2 Sep. 2026.

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