govern

  1. Verb.  (transitive) To make and administer the public policy and affairs of; to exercise sovereign authority in.
  2. Verb.  (transitive) To control the actions or behavior of; to keep under control; to restrain.
  3. Verb.  (transitive) To exercise a deciding or determining influence on.
  4. Verb.  (transitive) To control the speed, flow etc. of; to regulate.
  5. Verb.  (intransitive) To exercise political authority; to run a government.
  6. Verb.  (intransitive) To have or exercise a determining influence.
  7. Verb.  (transitive) To require that a certain preposition, grammatical case, etc. be used with a word; sometimes used synonymously with collocate.

This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.

This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.