Teach
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /tiËtʃ/
- US IPA: /titʃ/
- Rhymes: -iËtʃ
Origin
From Middle English techen, from Old English tǣċan ("to show, declare, demonstrate; teach, instruct, train; assign, prescribe, direct; warn; persuade"), from Proto-Germanic *taikijanÄ… ("to show"), from Proto-Indo-European *deyǵe-, *deyḱe- ("to show, point out, declare, tell"). Cognate with Scots tech, teich ("to teach"), German zeigen ("to show, point out"), Gothic ðŒ²ðŒ°ð„ðŒ´ðŒ¹ðŒ·ðŒ°ðŒ¿ (gateihan, "to announce, declare, tell"), Latin dÄ«cÅ ("speak, say, tell"), Ancient Greek δείκνυμι (deÃknumi, "show, point out, explain, teach"). More at token.
Full definition of teach
Verb
- (obsolete, transitive) To show (someone) the way; to guide, conduct.
- 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Book VI:Than Sir Launcelot armed hym and toke his horse, and so he was taughte to the abbey.
- (transitive) To pass on knowledge.Can you teach me to sew? Can you teach sewing to me?
- (intransitive) To pass on knowledge, especially as one's profession; to act as a teacher.She used to teach at university.
- (transitive) To cause to learn or understand.
- 1898, Winston Churchill, The Celebrity Chapter 8, The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;.... Now she had come to look upon the matter in its true proportions, and her anticipation of a possible chance of teaching him a lesson was a pleasure to behold.
- 2013, Rob Dorit, Making Life from Scratch, Deep Blue taught us a great deal about the power of the human mind precisely because it could not reproduce the intuitive and logical leaps of Kasparov’s mind. A truly synthetic cell, built from scratch or even from preexisting components, will be a cell without ancestry, and it, too, will teach us a great deal about the underlying complexities of life without actually reproducing them.
Antonyms
- (intransitive, to pass on knowledge) learn