n-trohl]
verb, -trolled, -trol⋅ling, noun | 1. | to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command. |
| 2. | to hold in check; curb: to control a horse; to control one's emotions. |
| 3. | to test or verify (a scientific experiment) by a parallel experiment or other standard of comparison. |
| 4. | to eliminate or prevent the flourishing or spread of: to control a forest fire. |
| 5. | Obsolete. to check or regulate (transactions), originally by means of a duplicate register. |
| 6. | the act or power of controlling; regulation; domination or command: Who's in control here? |
| 7. | the situation of being under the regulation, domination, or command of another: The car is out of control. |
| 8. | check or restraint: Her anger is under control. |
| 9. | a legal or official means of regulation or restraint: to institute wage and price controls. |
| 10. | a standard of comparison in scientific experimentation. |
| 11. | a person who acts as a check; controller. |
| 12. | a device for regulating and guiding a machine, as a motor or airplane. |
| 13. | controls, a coordinated arrangement of such devices. |
| 14. | prevention of the flourishing or spread of something undesirable: rodent control. |
| 15. | Baseball. the ability of a pitcher to throw the ball into the strike zone consistently: The rookie pitcher has great power but no control. |
| 16. | Philately. any device printed on a postage or revenue stamp to authenticate it as a government issue or to identify it for bookkeeping purposes. |
| 17. | a spiritual agency believed to assist a medium at a séance. |
| 18. | the supervisor to whom an espionage agent reports when in the field. |

control con·trol (kən-trōl')
v. con·trolled, con·trol·ling, con·trols
To verify or regulate a scientific experiment by conducting a parallel experiment or by comparing with another standard.
To hold in restraint; check.
A standard of comparison for checking or verifying the results of an experiment.
An individual or group used as a standard of comparison in a control experiment.
| control (kən-trōl') Pronunciation Key
A standard of comparison for checking or verifying the results of an experiment. In an experiment to test the effectiveness of a new drug, for example, one group of subjects (the control group) receives an inactive substance or placebo , while a comparison group receives the drug being tested. |