Library / English Dictionary

PRESIDE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Act as president

Example:

preside over companies and corporations

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "preside" is one way to...):

command; control (exercise authoritative control or power over)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Derivation:

President (the office of the United States head of state)

president (the chief executive of a republic)

President (the person who holds the office of head of state of the United States government)

president (an executive officer of a firm or corporation)

president (the head administrative officer of a college or university)

president (the officer who presides at the meetings of an organization)

Credits

 Context examples: 

The officer who presides at the meetings of an organization, committee, or other organizational structure.

(Chairperson, NCI Thesaurus)

Specific grounds for annullment vary within the presiding jurisdiction, whether geographic or religious.

(Annulled, NCI Thesaurus)

I shall say nothing of those remote nations where Yahoos preside; among which the least corrupted are the Brobdingnagians; whose wise maxims in morality and government it would be our happiness to observe.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Mrs. Jennings was not struck by the same thought; for soon after his entrance, she walked across the room to the tea-table where Elinor presided, and whispered— The Colonel looks as grave as ever you see.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

His sisters were anxious for his having an estate of his own; but, though he was now only established as a tenant, Miss Bingley was by no means unwilling to preside at his table—nor was Mrs. Hurst, who had married a man of more fashion than fortune, less disposed to consider his house as her home when it suited her.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I knelt on the grass and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed, By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the dæmon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

No, except when she thought of her mother, and remembered where she had been used to sit and preside, she had no sigh of that description to heave.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Ladies and gentlemen, I am ordered by Miss Woodhouse (who, wherever she is, presides) to say, that she desires to know what you are all thinking of?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

From the first I had determined that I would myself preside over your investigation.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too young to preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner was announced, and seated myself opposite to him.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)