Control

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /kənˈtɹəʊl/

Definitions

1. The power to direct, manage, or regulate something or someone's behavior or actions
2. The ability to exercise authority over, direct, or govern individuals or processes in various situations
3. The capacity to influence, steer, or maintain dominance over activities, systems, or individuals effectively

Etymology: The modern sense of "control" began as a bookkeeping term. Medieval Latin "contrarotulare" meant to check an account against a duplicate, from "contrarotulus", a copy of a roll. "Contra" means "against", and "rotulus" is a little roll, the sort of parchment scroll on which accounts were written. Anyone checking a clerk's figures therefore held a second scroll against the first, and that act of verification gave the word its core idea. Middle French turned this into "contreroller", and English borrowed it as "controllen" in the Middle English period. For centuries the word kept that sense of checking or verifying, and the meaning of exercising authority over something grew out of it. The "rolls" were the means of holding someone to account, and the power to direct followed from that accountability. English also had its own word for power over others: "wield", which merged from the Old English "wealdan" and "wieldan". "Control" partly displaced it, so the two words now overlap in meaning, though only "control" carries the old idea of checking a record.

Synonyms: manage, direct, regulate, command, oversee

Antonyms: chaos, disorder, anarchy, neglect