Guideline

How to spell guideline

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce guideline

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does guideline mean?

1. nounA general rule or piece of advice that directs how something should be done.

Guideline in a sentence

• The company issued a new guideline for working from home.

• Each guideline in the report explains how to handle a customer complaint.

Where does guideline come from?

Language of origin: French

Guideline is a fairly modern English compound, built from two much older pieces. The first half, 'guide', arrived from the Old French verb 'guider', meaning 'to lead' or 'to show the way', which itself traces back to a Germanic root tied to watching over and directing. The second half, 'line', comes from the Latin 'linea', a string or thread made of flax, which is why a line originally meant something stretched taut and straight before it came to mean any marked course or boundary. Joined together, the word first described a literal cord or rope used to guide a load or steady a tent, and only in the twentieth century did it settle into its now familiar figurative sense of a stated rule or recommendation that steers behaviour. The spelling stays neatly transparent: it is simply 'guide' with its silent 'u' intact plus 'line', so the trap is remembering the 'ui' and that the two words fuse without a hyphen.

How the word is built

• guide (to lead or direct)
• line (a marked course or boundary)