Advising

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Providing suggestions or guidance to help someone make decisions
2. Offering expert opinions or recommendations to assist in planning and actions
3. Giving counsel or advice to influence someone's choices or behavior

Etymology: The verb "advise" has a surprisingly broad older sense: in Middle English it meant "to perceive, consider, or inform," and it was tied to the idea of looking closely at something before deciding what to do. Its ancestry runs through Old French "aviser," which itself could be built on "avis," meaning opinion or view, and "avis" likely traces to the Late Latin "advisō," a formation from "ad" ("toward") and "visō," meaning "to look at attentively." The original image is therefore one of looking toward something, which is the same kind of visual attention that eventually became the act of weighing a situation and offering counsel. The modern sense of giving recommendations developed from the older notion of deliberating over what one has seen. Someone who "advised" was once someone who had considered the matter carefully and reported their judgment, and the advice itself was the result of that scrutiny. The "-ing" form in the present usage simply marks the ongoing activity of offering such expert counsel to someone planning an action.

Synonyms: counseling, guiding, consulting, recommending, suggesting

Antonyms: misleading, dissuading, ignoring, neglecting, abandoning