English

A signpost

Alternative forms

• sign-post

Noun

signpost ‎(plural signposts)

1. a post bearing a sign that gives information on directions
2. (cryptic crosswords) A word or phrase within a clue that serves as an indicator, rather than being fodder.
   • 2012, David Astle, Puzzled: Secrets and clues from a life in words

     In the first example — Dance revolutionised Burma — you know the middle word is the signpost as revolutionised is too long to be the fodder (or letters to scramble). […] And bang, out jumps RUMBA.

Translations

Verb

signpost ‎(third-person singular simple present signposts, present participle signposting, simple past and past participle signposted)

1. (transitive) To install signposts on.

   The route wasn't signposted, and we got lost on the way.

2. (transitive) To direct (somebody) to services, resources, etc.
   • 2008, Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Work and Pensions Committee, Valuing and Supporting Carers (volume 1, page 31)

     We believe that some Carers' Centres already offer an effective 'first stop shop' for signposting carers to local organisations, services and benefits, and for providing ongoing support as carers' circumstances change.

3. To indicate logical progress of a discourse using words or phrases such as now, right, to recap, to sum up, as I was saying, etc.
   • 2013 August 8, Charlotte Mulcare, “The lost mathematicians: Numbers in the (not so) dark ages”, in plus.maths.org, retrieved 2013-09-08:

     Bede, never one to shrink from a challenge, focused his energies not only onto calculating Easter but also onto describing why the maths mattered as much as the result. In this, his elevated rhetoric is balanced by a very human enthusiasm — it's hard not to love a writer who signposts his core hypotheses with phrases such as 'now to gut the bowels of this question!'

4. To signal, as if with a signpost

Translations

See also

• fingerpost
• guidepost
• waymark

Anagrams

• postings
• stop sign