1612 J. Brinsley Ludus Lit. x. 154 (heading) An example of dictating in English, and setting downe both English and Latine; and the Latine both plainly and elegantly.

1631 in S. R. Gardiner Rep. Cases Star Chamber & High Comm. (1886) 5 S^r Arthur denyed the dictating of the letter.

1712 M. Henry Serm. at Broad-Oak 11 in Acct. Life P. Henry (ed. 3) She is not doom'd..to perpetual Silence, but what she doth say, Wisdom has the dictating of it.

1747 S. Richardson Clarissa I. xxxiii. 224 The superscription is of his dictating, I dare say.

1815 W. Scott Guy Mannering II. 336 He'll write to my dictating three nights in the week without sleep.

1883 Evang. Mag. Aug. 349 The dictating of a letter to the home-circle.

1929 H. J. Savage & H. W. Bentley Amer. College Athletics ix. 201 There is too much rationalizing and dictating of interpretations of rules by coaches, managers, and directors to undergraduates.

1951 G. Heyer Quiet Gentleman xviii. 267 The Dowager harangued him for half an hour, ringing all the changes between scolding, dictating, and pleading.

1996 J. D. Morris Market Power & Business Strategy 101 Yamamoto Tsunetomo..is credited with the dictating of the Hagakure.

1878 N. Amer. Rev. May–June 532 The writer would use his phonograph simply as a dictating-machine, his clerk writing it out from the phonograph at leisure.

1907 Sci. Amer. Suppl. 11 May 26208/1 Messrs. Kelley M. Turner and William F. H. Germer..have been granted a United States patent (No. 843,186) on a telephone dictating machine which they term a ‘dictograph’.

1957 Economist 19 Oct. 205/1 (advt.) Most people like Stenorette Dictating Machines... A Stenorette takes an average day's dictation on one spool of magnetic tape that can be used over and over again indefinitely.

1998 Y.-M. Ooi Flame Tree (1999) xxvii. 378 She lifted out the first cassette and clicked it into the dictating machine on the desk.

1664 J. Chandler tr. J. B. van Helmont Wks. xi. 419 When through the dictating testimony of truth within, they found not rest for themselves in Elements, Complexions, and Humours: they..sought out a mean whereby they might find the cause of Diseases by vapours and winds.

1709 R. Steele & J. Swift Tatler No. 71 You rival your Correspondent Lewis le Grand, and his dictating Academy.

a1722 J. Toland Coll. Several Pieces (1726) II. 288 The clogging and nauseating slops of the Physicians (to say nothing of their imperious dictating oracular declarations, or insolent behaviour).

1830 Westm. Rev. 12 3 Under the controlling and dictating power of truth and nature.

1894 Times 10 Dec. 6/6 The dictating and dictatorial actor is intolerable.

1923 Internat. Jrnl. Ethics 33 292 Freedom may vanish in a dictating proletariat.

1949 R. Chandler Let. 18 Mar. in Sel. Lett. (1987) 154 Almost all the dictating writers suffer from logorrhea.

1992 Raritan Summer 5 A speech act which posits itself as a dictation immediately attributes this reference to a dictation to the dictating source itself.