Definition of "dictate"

dictate

noun
plural dictates
1. An order or command.
verb
third-person singular simple present dictates, present participle dictating, simple past and past participle dictated
1. To order, command, control.
  Quotations
  Trademark Owners will nevertheless try to dictate how their marks are to be represented, but dictionary publishers with spine can resist such pressure.
  2001, Sydney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, Cambridge University Press, page 409
2. To speak in order for someone to write down the words.
3. To determine or decisively affect.
  Quotations
  He had offered, and been refused! There was that in her own nature, which sympathised with the pride, for such she held to be the motive, dictating the refusal.
  1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Return to Courtenaye Hall”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], page 151
  Geology dictates the approximate location of the tunnel.
  1961 December, “The Channel Tunnel—a realistic proposal”, in Trains Illustrated, page 723