Guide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Guide (disambiguation).
A guide is a person who leads people through unknown or unmapped country, or conducts travellers and tourists through a place of interest.
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[edit] Etymology
The word "guide" was incorporated into (Middle) English via Old French "guider" which meant "to guide, lead, conduct" it was originally taken by Old French from Frankish "*witan" meaning "show the way" (compare modern Dutch "weten") from Proto-Germanic "*wit-" meaning "to know" (compare Old English "witan" meaning "to see"). The French word influenced by Old Provencal "guidar" meaning "guide or leader" is from the same source.
[edit] Tour guide
A tour guide is a person who leads tourists or other travelers around a tourist site, or on a longer tour along a tourist circuit. Such a tour is called a "guided tour". When the guide works at a particular location, such as a museum, they may be called a docent. They may lead an individual or group as part of a package holiday.
[edit] Mountain guide
Mountain guides are those employed in mountaineering; these are not merely to show the way but stand in the position of professional climbers with an expert knowledge of rock and snowcraft, which they impart to the amateur, at the same time assuring the safety of the climbing party. This professional class of guides arose in the middle of the 19th century when Alpine climbing became recognized as a sport.
In Switzerland, the central committee of the Swiss Alpine Club issues a guides’ tariff which fixes the charges for guides and porters; there are three sections, for the Valais and Vaudois Alps, for the Bernese Oberland, and for central and eastern Switzerland.
In Chamonix (France)a statue has been raised to Jacques Balmat, who was the first to climb Mont Blanc in 1786. Other notable European guides are Auguste Balmat, Michel Cros, Maquignay, J. A. Carrel, who went with E. Whymper to the Andes, the brothers Lauener, Christian Almer and Jakob and Melchior Anderegg.
[edit] Metaphysical guides
[edit] Trip sitter
A psychedelic guide is someone who guides a drug user's experiences as opposed to a sitter who merely remains present, ready to discourage bad trips and handle emergencies but not otherwise getting involved. Guides are more common amongst spiritual users of entheogens. Psychedelic guides were strongly encouraged by Timothy Leary and the other authors of The Psychedelic Experience: A Guide Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Trip sitters are also mentioned in the Responsible Drug User's Oath.
[edit] Guided meditation
[edit] Military use of guides and development of Guides Regiments
In European wars up to the time of the French Revolution, the absence of large-scale detailed maps made local guides almost essential to the direction of military operations. In the 18th century the stricter organization of military resources led in various countries to the special training of guide officers (called Feldjäger, and considered as general staff officers in the Prussian army), who had the primary duty of finding, and if necessary establishing, routes across country.
The necessity for such guides died away when adequate surveys (in which guide officers were, at any rate in Kingdom of Prussia, freely employed) became available. The genesis of the “ Guides” regiments is perhaps to be found in a short-lived Corps of Guides formed by Napoleon in Italy in 1796, which appears to have been a personal escort or body guard composed of men who knew the country.
In the Belgian army the two Guides regiments constituted part of the light cavalry. Until the outbreak of World War I these units were characterised by their green, yellow and crimson uniforms. As such the Belgian Guides came to correspond to the Guard cavalry of other nations. They served with panache (and still in green and crimson) during the German invasion of August 1914.
In the Swiss army prior to 1914 the squadrons of blue uniformed “Guides” acted as divisional cavalry. In this role these light cavalry units would have been called upon, on occasion, to lead columns. They were distinct from the green coated Dragoon Regiments who made up the line cavalry.
The “Queen’s own Corps of Guides” of the Indian army consisted of a unique combination of infantry companies and cavalry squadrons. After World War I the infantry element was incorporated in the 12th Frontier Force Regiment and the Guides Cavalry formed a separate regiment. The Corps of Guides were the first military force to adopt khaki as a service dress, in 1849.
In drill, a “guide “ is an officer or non-commissioned officer who regulates the direction and pace of movements.
[edit] Other Usages
The name guide can be used for a knowledge management database. For example a university could write a guide for students on the facilities of that university.
In mechanical usage, the term "guide" can mean something that steadies or directs the motion of an object, as of the “leading” screw of a screw-cutting lathe, of a loose pulley used to steady a driving-belt, or of the bars or rods in a steam-engine which keep the sliding blocks moving in a straight line.
In the Indian Academia the word guide is referred to the person who helps prepare a Doctorate or Ph.D. thesis.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. Original text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
