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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. I credit what the Grecian dictates say. Prior.

One who dictates; one who prescribes rules and maxims authoritatively for the direction of others. Locke.

To cause to eat and drink sparingly, or by prescribed rules; to regulate medicinally the food of. She diets him with fasting every day. Spenser.

One who lives in accordance with prescribed rules for diet; a dieter.

Pertaining to diet, or to the rules of diet.

One who diets; one who prescribes, or who partakes of, food, according to hygienic rules.

Of or performance to diet, or to the rules for regulating the kind and quantity of food to be eaten.

That part of the medical or hygienic art which relates to diet or food; rules for diet. To suppose that the whole of dietetics lies in determining whether or not bread is more nutritive than potatoes. H. Spencer.

A physician who applies the rules of dietetics to the cure of diseases. Dunglison.

sh their opinion. Robynson (More's Utopia). I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations. Ezek. xxix. 15. O thou . . . at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads. Milton.

According to the rules of diplomacy; in the manner of a diplomatist; artfully.

A collection or body of directions, rules, or ordinances; esp., a book of directions for the conduct of worship; as, the Directory used by the nonconformists instead of the Prayer Book.

tual corporation. Appropriations of the several parsonages . . . would heave been, by the rules of the common law, disappropriated. Blackstone.

order and obedience; one who enforces rigid discipline; a stickler for the observance of rules and methods of training; as, he is a better disciplinarian than scholar.

Training to act in accordance with established rules; accustoming to systematic and regular action; drill. Their wildness lose, and, quitting nature's part, Obey the rules and discipline of art. Dryden.

o do what is commanded, or doing what is prohibited; refractory; not observant of duty or rules prescribed by authority; -- applied to persons and acts. This disobedient spirit in the colonies. Burke. Disobedient unto the word of the Lord. 1 Kings xiii. 26.

a system of principles, promises, and rules ordained and administered; scheme; economy; as, the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations. Neither are God's methods or intentions different in his dispensations to each private man. Rogers.

sing. To have reduced the different qualifications in the different States to one uniform rule, would probably have been as dissatisfactory to some of the States, as difficult for the Convention. A. Hamilton. -- Dis*sat`is*fac"to*ri*ness, n.

Dominion; rule. [Obs.] Evelyn.

Under rule; subject; tributary. [Obs.] Chapman.