Merriam-Webster�s

Collegiaten

Dictionary

EL E V E N T HED I T I O N

Merriam-Webster, IncorporatedSpringfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

A GENUINE MERRIAM-WEBSTER

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Merriam-Webster�s collegiate dictionary. � Eleventh ed.p. cm.

Includes index.ISBN-13: 978-0-87779-807-1 �Laminated unindexed : alk. paper�ISBN-10: 0-87779-807-9 �Laminated unindexed : alk. paper�ISBN-13: 978-0-87779-808-8 �Jacketed hardcover unindexed : alk. paper�ISBN-10: 0-87779-808-7 �Jacketed hardcover unindexed : alk. paper�ISBN-13: 978-0-87779-809-5 �Jacketed hardcover with CD-ROM : alk. paper�ISBN-10: 0-87779-809-5 �Jacketed hardcover with CD-ROM : alk. paper�ISBN-13: 978-0-87779-810-1 �Leatherlook with CD-ROM : alk. paper�ISBN-10: 0-87779-810-9 �Leatherlook with CD-ROM : alk. paper�ISBN-13: 978-0-87779-813-2 �Canadian�ISBN-10: 0-87779-813-3 �Canadian�ISBN-13: 978-0-87779-814-9 �International�ISBN-10: 0-87779-814-1 �International�1. English language�Dictionaries. I. Title: Collegiate dictionary. II. Merriam-Webster, Inc.

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Merriam-Webster�s Collegiaten Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, principal copyright2003

COLLEGIATE is a registered trademark of Merriam-Webster, Incorporated

All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may bereproduced or copied in any form or by any means�graphic, electronic, ormechanical, including photocopying, taping, or information storage and retrievalsystems�without written permission of the publisher.

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Contents

Preface 6a

Explanatory Chart 8a

Explanatory Notes 10a

The English Language in the Dictionary 25a

Guide to Pronunciation 33a

Abbreviations in This Work 38a

Pronunciation Symbols 40a

A Dictionary of the English Language 1

Foreign Words and Phrases 1460

Biographical Names 1466

Geographical Names 1511

Signs and Symbols 1600

A Handbook of Style 1604

Index 1623

PrefaceWhen Webster�s Collegiate Dictionary was first pub-

lished, the year was 1898, and Americans were being ex-horted to �remember the Maine.� As the eleventh consec-utive edition of this standard reference book appears, wehave crossed the nearly inconceivable divide between thesecond and third millennia of the modern era, but sincedaily lives can scarcely be led in constant awareness of aspan of time that vast, we now situate ourselves, for themost part, in the first decade of the twenty-first century.Over the time between these editions, the world has madeits way through two global wars and many others of amore limited kind� wide-ranging social, political, and eco-nomic change �not to say, revolution�� and successivewaves of technological change that have transformed com-munication, transportation, information storage and re-trieval, and great numbers of other human activities. Atevery turn these events and developments have had a ma-jor effect on the stock of words that English speakers use,and it has been the job of a good general dictionary torecord these changes. The present book is the latest effortby the editorial team of Merriam-Webster to meet that re-sponsibility.

Merriam-Webster�s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edi-tion, like all earlier editions is meant to serve the generalpublic as its chief source of information about the wordsof our language. Its title may suggest a special appropriate-ness for the older student, but those who work in officesand those who read, think, and write at home will equallyfind it a trustworthy guide to the English of our day.

The ever-expanding vocabulary of our language exertsinexorable pressure on the contents of any dictionary.Words and senses are born at a far greater rate than that atwhich they die out. The 1664 pages of this Collegiate makeit the most comprehensive ever published. And its treat-ment of words is as nearly exhaustive as the compass of anabridged work permits. As in all Merriam-Webster dictio-naries, the information given is based on the collection of15,700,000 citations maintained in the offices of this com-pany. These citations show words used in a wide range ofprinted sources, and the collection is constantly being aug-mented through the efforts of the editorial staff. Thus, theuser of the dictionary may be confident that entries in theCollegiate are based on current as well as older material.The citation files hold 5,700,000 more examples than wereavailable to the editors of Webster�s Third New Interna-tional Dictionary, published in 1961, and 1,200,000 morethan the editors of the Tenth Edition had at their disposal.The editors of this edition also had available to them amachine-readable corpus of over 76,000,000 words of textdrawn from the wide and constantly changing range ofpublications that supply the paper slips in the citationfiles. It is now nearly four times the size of the corpus usedby the editors of the Tenth Edition.

Those entries known to be trademarks or service marksare so labeled and are treated in accordance with a formu-la approved by the United States Trademark Association.No entry in this dictionary, however, should be regardedas affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

The best features of the vocabulary section in the lastedition have been retained, reviewed, and improved forthis one. Additional pictorial illustrations are present, andmany of them were drawn especially for this book in orderto supplement and clarify definitions. Synonym para-graphs and usage paragraphs are both here again, aug-mented in number. The dates of first use provided at mostmain entries have proved to be very popular with users ofthe Collegiate. For the Eleventh Edition, thousands ofthese dates have been pushed back in time, anywhere froma single year to several centuries from published materials

�both print and electronic� not available ten years ago,from the continuing investigations of our own editors, andfrom the contributions of hundreds of interested readers.Two important changes in the treatment of the vocabularyhave been made for this edition, one to provide additionalinformation and the other to make information easier tofind. All standard variants are now shown at the relevantmain entry so that the reader may see at a glance whetherthey are equal variants with the main entry or are distinct-ly less frequent. And entries for abbreviations as well asfor the symbols for chemical elements are now quicklyfound in the vocabulary section and need not be sought ina separate section tucked away in the back matter, as inthe previous edition.

The front matter of this book establishes a context forunderstanding what this dictionary is and how it came tobe, as well as how it may be used most effectively. The Ex-planatory Notes address themselves to the latter topic.They answer the user�s questions about the conventions,devices, and techniques by which the editors have beenable to compress mountains of information about Englishwords into so few pages. All users of the dictionary areurged to read this section through and then consult it forspecial information as they need to. The brief essay on ourlanguage as it is recorded in Merriam-Webster dictionar-ies, and this Collegiate in particular, is meant to satisfy aninterest in lexicography often expressed in the correspon-dence which our editors receive. The Guide to Pronuncia-tion serves both to show how the pronunciations in thisbook are arrived at and to explain the mechanics of the re-spelling system in which they are set down.

The back matter retains five sections from the last edi-tion of the Collegiate. These are Foreign Words and Phras-es that occur frequently in English texts but have not be-come part of the English vocabulary� thousands of propernames brought together under the separate headings Bio-graphical Names and Geographical Names� a gathering ofimportant Signs and Symbols that cannot readily be alpha-betized� and a Handbook of Style in which various stylisticconventions �as of punctuation and capitalization� aresummarized and exemplified. All the sections have beencarefully updated for this edition.

Looking at a copy of that long-ago first Collegiate Dic-tionary, one is struck by how different it is, as a physicalbook and as a work of reference, from the present edition.The board covers are heavy, the margins of the page arewide, and the type is relatively large� at the same time itholds only about 1100 pages and less than half the numberof vocabulary entries of this Eleventh Edition. At that timethe Merriam-Webster citation file was no more than in itsinfancy. Yet the editors of that book created it with thesame careful, serious attention that the present editorshave brought to their work.

We believe that this work sustains and advances the tra-dition of excellence in lexicography that is the heritage ofMerriam-Webster, Incorporated. The editorial staff whoproduced it include a number of people who have madecontributions to three or four successive editions of theCollegiate Dictionary. That experience and that continuityform an important part of what the Eleventh Edition is, asdo the energy and care of those who have joined the staffjust within the last few years. Some of the latter group willvery likely contribute in major ways to the twelfth, thethirteenth, perhaps even the fourteenth edition of the Col-legiate. In the meantime, the entire staff, whose namesare given on the facing page, offer their work to peopleeverywhere who need information about the vocabularyof English, in the assurance that it will prove a reliablecompanion.

Frederick C. MishEditor in Chief

6a

Editorial Staff

Editor in ChiefFrederick C. Mish

Director of DefiningStephen J. Perrault

Director of Editorial OperationsMadeline L. Novak

Senior EditorsRobert D. Copeland �special projects�

� Joanne M. Despres �dates�� James G. Lowe �general defining�

� Roger W. Pease, Jr. �science defining�� James L. Rader �etymology�

Associate EditorsMichael G. Belanger �biographical names�

� Susan L. Brady � Rebecca R. Bryer� Deanna Stathis Chiasson

� Kathleen M. Doherty �abbreviations andquotations� � Anne Eason

� Joshua S. Guenter �pronunciation�� Daniel J. Hopkins �geography�

� Joan I. Narmontas �life science�� Thomas F. Pitoniak �production�

� Donna L. Rickerby �data files�� Michael D. Roundy �physical science�

� Maria Sansalone �cross-reference�� Peter A. Sokolowski � Karen L. Wilkinson

� Linda Picard Wood

Assistant EditorsEmily B. Arsenault � Rose Martino Bigelow

� Daniel B. Brandon � Emily A. Brewster� Diane Caswell Christian � Jennifer N. Cislo

� Christopher Chapin Connor � Penny L. Couillard� Allison S. Crawford � Ilya A. Davidovich

� Benjamin T. Korzec � G. James Kossuth III� Jeffrey D. Middleton �illustrations�

� Adrienne M. Scholz � Neil S. Serven� Kory L. Stamper � Emily A. Vezina � Judy Yeh

Director of Electronic Product DevelopmentGerald L. Wick

Electronic Product Development StaffMichael G. Guzzi �manager�

� L. Jill Nebeker �Web production�� Elizabeth S. Wolf �content coordinator�

Director of General ReferenceMark A. Stevens

General Reference EditorsC. Roger Davis � Jocelyn White Franklin

LibrarianFrancine A. Roberts

Departmental SecretaryGeorgette B. Boucher

Head of Data EntryVeronica P. McLymont

Senior ClerkCarol A. Fugiel

Clerical and Data-Entry StaffMary M. Dunn � Florence A. Fowler

� Patricia M. Jensen � E. Louise Johnson� Stacy-Ann S. Lall � Suzanne M. Talaia

Editorial ContributorsCynthia S. Ashby � Sharon Goldstein

Electronic Product Development ConsultantKara L. Noble

Merriam-Webster, Incorporated

John M. Morse

President and Publisher

angle bracketsPAGE 19a

binomialPAGE 22a

boldface colonPAGE 20a

called alsoPAGE 19a

capitalization labelPAGE 15a

centered dotsPAGE 11a

cognate cross-referencePAGE 23a

cutback inflected formsPAGES 14a, 15a

datePAGES 17a, 18a

defined run-on entryPAGES 11a, 12a

definitionPAGES 20a, 21a

directional cross-referencePAGE 23a

equal variantPAGE 11a

etymologyPAGES 15a, 16a, 17a

functional labelPAGE 13a

guide phrasePAGE 19a

homographsPAGE 10a

illustrative quotationPAGE 19a

inflected formsPAGES 13a, 14a, 15a

inflectional cross-referencePAGE 23a

list of undefined wordsPAGE 24a

lowercasePAGE 15a

main entryPAGE 10a

guide wordsPAGES 10a, 11a

often attribPAGE 15a

primary stressPAGE 12a

pronunciationPAGES 12a, 13a

regional labelPAGE 18a

secondary stressPAGE 12a

secondary variantPAGE 11a

sense dividerPAGE 20a

sense letterPAGE 20a

sense numberPAGE 20a

stylistic labelPAGES 18a, 19a

subject labelPAGE 19a

swung dash (boldface)PAGE 13a

swung dash (lightface)PAGE 19a

synonymous cross-referencePAGE 23a

synonym paragraphPAGES 23a, 24a

syn seePAGES 23a, 24a

temporal labelPAGE 18a

undefined run-on entryPAGES 11a, 12a

uppercasePAGE 15a

usage notePAGE 19a

usage paragraphPAGES 19a, 20a

usage seePAGE 20a

verbal illustrationPAGE 19a

Explanatory Notes

Entries

MAIN ENTRIESA boldface letter or a combination of such letters, in-

cluding punctuation marks and diacritics where needed,that is set flush with the left-hand margin of each columnof type is a main entry or entry word. The main entry mayconsist of letters set solid, of letters joined by a hyphen ora slash, or of letters separated by one or more spaces:

1alone . . . adj

aueto–da–fé . . . n

and/or . . . conj

automatic pilot n

The material in lightface type that follows each main entryon the same line and on succeeding indented lines explainsand justifies its inclusion in the dictionary.

Variation in the styling of compound words in English isfrequent and widespread. It is often completely acceptableto choose freely among open, hyphenated, and closed al-ternatives �as life style, life-style, or lifestyle�. However, toshow all the stylings that are found for English compoundswould require space that can be better used for other in-formation. So this dictionary limits itself to a single stylingfor a compound:

peaceemakeer

pell–mell

boom box

When a compound is widely used and one styling predom-inates, that styling is shown. When a compound is uncom-mon or when the evidence indicates that two or three styl-ings are approximately equal in frequency, the stylingshown is based on the analogy of similar compounds.

ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLSAbbreviations and symbols for chemical elements are

included as main entries in the vocabulary:

ca abbr circa

Ca symbol calcium

Abbreviations have been normalized to one form. In prac-tice, however, there is considerable variation in the use ofperiods and in capitalization �as mph, m.p.h., Mph, andMPH�, and stylings other than those given in this dictio-nary are often acceptable.

For a list of abbreviations regularly used in this dictio-nary, see the section Abbreviations in This Work else-where in the front matter. Many of these are also in gener-al use, but as a rule an abbreviation is entered either in thevocabulary or in that list, not both.

ORDER OF MAIN ENTRIESThe main entries follow one another in alphabetical or-

der letter by letter without regard to intervening spaces orhyphens: battle royal follows battlement and earth�shattering follows earthshaking. Those containing an Ara-bic numeral are alphabetized as if the numeral were

spelled out: 3-D comes between three-color and three�decker. Those that often begin with the abbreviation St. incommon usage have the abbreviation spelled out: SaintAnthony�s fire.

Full words come before parts of words made up of thesame letters. Solid compounds come first and are followedby hyphenated compounds and then open compounds.Lowercase entries come before entries that begin with acapital letter:

3semi . . . n

semi- . . . prefix

takeeout . . . n

take–out . . . adj

take out vt

timeoethy . . . n

Timeoethy . . . n

HOMOGRAPHS

When one main entry has exactly the same written formas another, the two are distinguished by superscript nu-merals preceding each word:

1melt . . . vb 1pine . . . n

2melt n 2pine vi

Sometimes such homographs are related: the two entriesmelt are derived from the same root. Sometimes there isno relationship: the two entries pine are unrelated beyondthe accident of spelling. The order of homographs is usual-ly historical: the one first used in English is entered first. Ahomograph derived from an earlier homograph by func-tional shift, however, follows its parent immediately, withthe result that occasionally one homograph appears aheadof another that is older in usage. For example, of the threeentries kennel the second �a verb� is derived from the first�a noun�. Even though the unrelated third entry kennelwas used in English many years before the second, it fol-lows the two related entries.

Abbreviations and symbols that are homographs of oth-er entries are listed last:

1bus . . . n

2bus vb

3bus abbr

GUIDE WORDS

A pair of guide words is printed at the top of each page.The entries that fall alphabetically between the guidewords are found on that page.

It is important to remember that alphabetical orderrather than position of an entry on the page determinesthe selection of guide words. The first guide word is the al-phabetically first entry on the page. The second guideword is usually the alphabetically last entry on the page:

glee I globular cluster

The entry need not be a main entry. Another boldfaceword�a variant, an inflected form, or a defined or unde-

fined run-on�may be selected as a guide word. For thisreason the last printed main entry on a page is not alwaysthe last entry alphabetically:

IQ I ironness

On the page where these guide words are used, ironmon-gery is the last printed entry, but ironness, a derivativeword run on at 2iron, is the last entry alphabetically and sohas been chosen as the second guide word.

All guide words must themselves be in alphabetical or-der from page to page throughout the dictionary� thus, thealphabetically last entry on a page is not used if it followsalphabetically the first guide word on the next page:

joint I Jotun

On the page where these guide words are found, Jotunn, avariant at the entry Jotun, is the last entry alphabetically,but it is not used as the second guide word because it fol-lows alphabetically the entry Jotunheim, which is the firstguide word on the next page. To use Jotunn would violatethe alphabetical order of guide words from page to page,and so the entry Jotun is the second guide word instead.

END-OF-LINE DIVISIONThe centered dots within entry words indicate division

points at which a hyphen may be put at the end of a line ofprint or writing. Thus the noun posesiebileiety may be endedon one line with:

pos-

possi-

possibil-

possibili-

and continued on the next with:

sibility

bility

ity

ty

Centered dots are not shown after a single initial letter orbefore a single terminal letter because printers seldom cutoff a single letter:

aswirl . . . adj

mouthy . . . adj

idea . . . n

Nor are they shown at second and succeeding homographsunless these differ among themselves:

1reeform . . . vb 1mineute . . . n

2reform n 2minute vt

3reform adj 3mienute . . . adj

There are acceptable alternative end-of-line divisionsjust as there are acceptable variant spellings and pronunci-ations. It is, for example, all but impossible to produce aconvincing argument that either of the divisionsausetereiety, auestereiety is better than the other. But spacecannot be taken for entries like ausetereiety or auestereiety,and auesetereiety would likely be confusing to many. Nomore than one division is, therefore, shown for an entry inthis dictionary.

Many words have two or more common pronunciationvariants, and the same end-of-line division is not alwaysappropriate for each of them. The division flaegelelar, forexample, best fits the variant �flə-�je-lər� whereas the divi-sion flageelelar best fits the variant ��fla-jə-lər�. In instances

like this, the division falling farther to the left is used, re-gardless of the order of the pronunciations:

flaegelelar �flə-�je-lər, �fla-jə-lər�

For more information on centered dots within entrywords see the paragraph on hyphens in the Guide to Pro-nunciation.

A double hyphen at the end of a line in this dictionarystands for a hyphen that belongs at that point in a hyphen-ated word and that is retained when the word is written asa unit on one line.

lemon thyme n �1629� : a thyme �Thymus citriodorus� having lemon�scented leaves used as a seasoning� also : its leaves

VARIANTS

When a main entry is followed by the word or and an-other spelling, the two spellings occur with equal or nearlyequal frequency and can be considered equal variants.Both are standard, and either one may be used accordingto personal inclination:

ocher or ochre

If two variants joined by or are out of alphabetical order,they remain equal variants. The one printed first is, how-ever, slightly more common than the second:

polelyewog or poleliewog

When another spelling is joined to the main entry by theword also, the spelling after also occurs appreciably lessoften and thus is considered a secondary variant:

canecelelaetion also caneceleation

Secondary variants belong to standard usage and may beused according to personal inclination. If there are twosecondary variants, the second is joined to the first by or.Once the word also is used to signal a secondary variant,all following variants are joined by or:

1Shakeespeareean or Shakeespeareian also Shakespereean orShakespereian

The use of or to indicate equal variants and also to indi-cate secondary variants applies not only to main entries,but to all boldface entry words, including inflected formsand run-on entries.

Variants of main entries whose spelling places them al-phabetically more than a column away from the main en-try are entered at their own alphabetical places as well asat the main entry:

gibe or jibe . . . vb

1jibe var of ����

1rhyme also rime . . . n

rhymeester also rimeester . . . n

3rime, rimester var of �����, �������

Variants having a usage label appear only at their own al-phabetical places:

metre . . . chiefly Brit var of ����

agin . . . dial var of �����

RUN-ON ENTRIES

The defined senses of a main entry may be followed byone or more derivatives or by a homograph with a differ-ent functional label. These are run-on entries. Each is in-troduced by a lightface dash and each has a functional la-

Explanatory Notes 11a

bel. They are not defined, however, since their meaningsare readily derivable from the meaning of the root word:

slay . . . vb . . . � slayeer n

spireiteed . . . adj . . . � spireiteedely adv � spireiteedeness n

stacecaeto . . . adj . . . � staccato adv � staccato n

The defined senses of a main entry may be followed byone or more phrases containing the entry word or an in-flected form of it. These are also run-on entries. Each is in-troduced by a lightface dash but there is no functional la-bel. They are, however, defined since their meanings aremore than the sum of the meanings of their elements:

1hole . . . n . . . � in the hole 1 : . . .

1live . . . vb . . . � live it up : . . .

Defined phrases of this sort are run on at the entry consti-tuting the first major element in the phrase. The first ma-jor element is ordinarily a verb or a noun, but when theseare absent another part of speech may serve instead:

1but . . . conj . . . � but what : . . .

When there are variants, however, the run-on appears atthe entry constituting the first major invariable element inthe phrase:

1clock . . . n . . . � kill the clock or run out the clock : . . .

1hand . . . n . . . � on all hands or on every hand : . . .

A run-on entry is an independent entry with respect tofunction and status. Labels at the main entry do not applyunless they are repeated.

Attention is called to the definition of vocabulary entryin this book. The term dictionary entry includes all vocabu-lary entries as well as all boldface entries in the separatesections of the back matter headed �Foreign Words andPhrases,� �Biographical Names,� and �GeographicalNames.�

Pronunciation

Pronunciation is indicated between a pair of reversed vir-gules � � following the entry word. The symbols used arelisted in the chart printed inside the back cover of this dic-tionary and on the page facing the first page of the dictio-nary proper. An abbreviated list appears at the bottom ofthe second column on each right-hand page of the vocabu-lary. Explanations of the symbols are given in the Guide toPronunciation.

SYLLABLESA hyphen is used in the pronunciation to show syllabic

division. These hyphens sometimes coincide with the cen-tered dots in the entry word that indicate end-of-line divi-sion� sometimes they do not:

abesenetee ��ab-sən-�t�

1meteric ��me-trik�

STRESS

A high-set mark ��� indicates primary strongest� stressor accent� a low-set mark ��� indicates secondary medi-um� stress or accent:

heartebeat ��h�rt-�bt�

The stress mark stands at the beginning of the syllable thatreceives the stress.

Stress marks are an indication of the relative promi-nence of the syllables in a word. In running speech the pri-mary stress can vary in English words for several contextu-al and semantic reasons. Because the variation is so great,this book shows the primary stress of a word in its pronun-ciation as a single word out of context.

VARIANT PRONUNCIATIONSThe presence of variant pronunciations indicates that

not all educated speakers pronounce words the same way.A second-place variant is not to be regarded as less accept-able than the pronunciation that is given first. It may, infact, be used by as many educated speakers as the firstvariant, but the requirements of the printed page makeone precede the other:

apriecot ��a-prə-�k�t, � -�

foreeign ��f�r-ən, �f�r-�

A variant that is appreciably less common than the preced-ing variant is preceded by the word also:

1aleloy ��a-�l�i also ə-�l�i�

A variant preceded by sometimes is even less common,though it does occur in educated speech:

ineveiegle �in-�v -gəl sometimes -�v-�

Sometimes a regional label precedes a variant:

1great ��gr t, Southern also �greə�t�

The label dial precedes a variant that is noteworthy orcommon in a dialect or dialects of American English, butthat is not considered to be a standard pronunciation:

ask ��ask, ��sk� dial �aks�

The symbol �÷� is placed before a pronunciation variantthat occurs in educated speech but that is considered bysome to be unacceptable:

nuecleear ��n�-kl-ər, �ny�-, ÷-kyə-lər�

This symbol refers only to the immediately following vari-ant and not to subsequent variants separated from it by acomma or a semicolon.

PARENTHESES INPRONUNCIATIONS

Symbols enclosed by parentheses represent elementsthat are present in the pronunciation of some speakers butare absent from the pronunciation of other speakers, or el-ements that are present in some but absent from other ut-terances of the same speaker:

1twinekle ��twiŋ-kəl� vb . . . twinekling �-kə-�liŋ�

sateisefacetoery ��sa-təs-�fak-tə-�r�

reesponse �ri-�sp�nt�s�

Thus, the parentheses at twinkling mean that there aresome who pronounce the �ə� between �k� and �l� and oth-ers who do not pronounce it.

PARTIAL AND ABSENTPRONUNCIATIONS

When a main entry has less than a full pronunciation,the missing part is to be supplied from a pronunciation ina preceding entry or within the same pair of reversed vir-gules:

chamepieoneship �-�ship�

12a Explanatory Notes

Maedeiera �mə-�dir-ə, -�der-�

The pronunciation of the first three syllables of champion-ship is found at the main entry champion:

1chamepieon ��cham-p�-ən�

The hyphens before and after ��der� in the pronunciationof Madeira indicate that both the first and the last parts ofthe pronunciation are to be taken from the immediatelypreceding pronunciation.

Partial pronunciations are usually shown when two ormore variants have a part in common. When a variation ofstress is involved, a partial pronunciation may be termi-nated at the stress mark which stands at the beginning of asyllable not shown:

dieverse �d�-�vərs, də-�, �d�-��

anechoevy ��an-�ch�-v�, an-��

In general, no pronunciation is indicated for open com-pounds consisting of two or more English words that haveown-place entry:

witch doctor n

A pronunciation is shown, however, for any element of anopen compound that does not have entry at its own alpha-betical place:

diephosephoeglyecereic acid ��d�-�f�s-f�-gli-�ser-ik-�

sieve of Ereaetosetheenes �-�er-ə-�t�s-thə-�n�z�

Only the first entry in a sequence of numbered homo-graphs is given a pronunciation if their pronunciations arethe same:

1reeward �ri-�w�rd�

2reward

Pronunciations are shown for obsolete words only if theyoccur in Shakespeare:

cloisetress ��kl�i-strəs� n . . . obs

The pronunciation of unpronounced derivatives andcompounds run on at a main entry is a combination of thepronunciation at the main entry and the pronunciation ofthe suffix or final element as given at its alphabetical placein the vocabulary:

— ovaleness n

— shot in the dark

Thus, the pronunciation of ovalness is the sum of the pro-nunciations of oval and -ness� that of shot in the dark, thesum of the pronunciation of the four elements that makeup the phrase.

The notation sic is used at a few pronunciation respell-ings which are correct but are at variance with the spellingof the word.

Kieriebati ��kir-ə-�bas sic�

Functional Labels

An italic label indicating a part of speech or some otherfunctional classification follows the pronunciation or, ifno pronunciation is given, the main entry. The main tradi-tional parts of speech are indicated as follows:

1bold . . . adj 1but . . . conj

handeiely . . . adv oops . . . interj

boeleero . . . n someeone . . . pron

2under prep 1shrink . . . vb

If a verb is both transitive and intransitive, the labels vtand vi introduce the subdivisions:

flateten . . . vb . . . vt . . . � vi

A boldface swung dash � is used to stand for the main en-try as flatten and separate the subdivisions of the verb. Ifthere is no subdivision, vt or vi takes the place of vb:

2fleece vt

apeperetain . . . vi

Labeling a verb as transitive, however, does not precludeoccasional intransitive use as in absolute constructions.

Other italicized labels used to indicate functional classi-fications that are not traditional parts of speech are:

geog abbr -itis n suffix

poly- comb form -ize vb suffix

-logy n comb form Lyecra . . . trademark

-iferous adj comb form -nd symbol

super- prefix 1may . . . verbal auxiliary

Gramemy . . . service mark gidedyeap . . . vb imper

1-ic adj suffix meethinks . . . vb impersonal

2-ward or -wards adv suffix NC–17 . . . certification mark

Two functional labels are sometimes combined:

zilch . . . adj or n

afloat . . . adj or adv

Functional labels are not shown for main entries thatare noun phrases having a preposition in the middle:

ball of fire ca. 1900 : a person of unusual energy . . .

Functional labels are also not shown for phrases that aredefined run-on entries.

Inflected Forms

In comparison with some other languages, English doesnot have many inflected forms. Of those which it has, sev-eral are inflected forms of words belonging to small,closed groups as the personal pronouns or the demonstra-tives. These forms can readily be found at their own al-phabetical places with a full entry as whom, the objectivecase form of who or with a cross-reference in small capitalletters to another entry as those, the plural form of that.

Most other inflected forms, however, are covered ex-plicitly or by implication at the main entry for the baseform. These are the plurals of nouns, the principal parts ofverbs the past tense, the past participle when it differsfrom the past tense, and the present participle, and thecomparative and superlative forms of adjectives and ad-verbs. In general, it may be said that when these inflectedforms are created in a manner considered regular in En-glish as by adding -s or -es to nouns, -ed and -ing to verbs,and -er and -est to adjectives and adverbs and when itseems that there is nothing about the formation likely togive the dictionary user doubts, the inflected form is notshown in order to save space for information more likelyto be sought. Inflected forms are also not shown at unde-fined run-ons or at some entries bearing a limiting label:

gouremand . . . n . . . gouremanedize . . . vi

1femeienine . . . adj . . . femeienineeness . . . n

Explanatory Notes 13a

2lake n . . . � laky . . . adj

2cote . . . vt . . . obs : to pass by

crouse . . . adj . . . chiefly Scot : �����, �����

On the other hand, if the inflected form is created in an ir-regular way or if the dictionary user is likely to havedoubts about it �even though it is formed regularly�, theinflected form is shown in boldface, either in full or cutback to a convenient and easily recognizable point. Fulldetails about the kinds of entries at which inflected formsare shown and the kinds at which they are not shown aregiven in the three following sections.

NOUNSThe plurals of nouns are shown in this dictionary when

suffixation brings about a change of final -y to -i-, whenthe noun ends in a consonant plus -o, when the noun endsin -oo or -ey, when the noun has an irregular plural or azero plural or a foreign plural, when the noun is a com-pound that pluralizes any element but the last, when a fi-nal consonant is doubled, when the noun has variant plu-rals, and when it is believed that the dictionary user mighthave reasonable doubts about the spelling of the plural orwhen the plural is spelled in a way contrary to expecta-tions:

2spy n, pl spies

sielo . . . n, pl silos2shampoo n, pl shampoos

galeley . . . n, pl galleys1mouse . . . n, pl mice

moose . . . n, pl moose

crieteerieon . . . n, pl -ria

son–in–law . . . n, pl sons–in–law1quiz . . . n, pl quizezes1fish . . . n, pl fish or fishees

coregi . . . n, pl corgis3dry n, pl drys

Cutback inflected forms are used when the noun has threeor more syllables:

ameeniety . . . n, pl -ties

The plurals of nouns are usually not shown when the baseword is unchanged by suffixation, when the noun is acompound whose second element is readily recognizableas a regular free form entered at its own place, or when thenoun is unlikely to occur in the plural:

1night . . . n

2crunch n

foreefoot . . . n

moenogeaemy . . . n

Nouns that are plural in form and that regularly occur inplural construction are labeled n pl:

muncheies . . . n pl

Nouns that are plural in form but that are not always con-strued as plurals are appropriately labeled:

roeboteics . . . n pl but sing in constr

two bits n pl but sing or pl in constr

A noun that is singular in construction takes a singularverb when it is used as a subject� a noun that is plural in

construction takes a plural verb when it is used as a sub-ject.

VERBSThe principal parts of verbs are shown in this dictionary

when suffixation brings about a doubling of a final conso-nant or an elision of a final -e or a change of final -y to -i-,when final -c changes to -ck in suffixation, when the verbends in -ey, when the inflection is irregular, when there arevariant inflected forms, and when it is believed that thedictionary user might have reasonable doubts about thespelling of an inflected form or when the inflected form isspelled in a way contrary to expectations:

2snag vt snagged; snageging1move . . . vb moved; moveing1cry . . . vb cried; cryeing2frolic vi froleicked; froleickeing1surevey . . . vb sureveyed; sureveyeing1drive . . . vb drove . . . � driveen . . . � driveing2bus vb bused also bussed; buseing also busesing2visa vt viesaed . . . � viesaeing2chagrin vt chaegrined . . . � chaegrineing

The principal parts of a regularly inflected verb are shownwhen it is desirable to indicate the pronunciation of one ofthe inflected forms:

learn . . . vb learned ��lərnd, �lərnt�� learneing

ripeen . . . vb ripeened; ripeeneing ��r�-pə-niŋ, �r�p-niŋ�

Cutback inflected forms are often used when the verb hasthree or more syllables, when it is a disyllable that ends in-l and has variant spellings, and when it is a compoundwhose second element is readily recognized as an irregularverb:

elimeienate . . . vb -nateed; -nateing3quarrel vi -reled or -relled; -releing or -releling1reetake . . . vt -took . . . � -takeen . . . � -takeing

The principal parts of verbs are usually not shown whenthe base word is unchanged by suffixation or when theverb is a compound whose second element is readily rec-ognizable as a regular free form entered at its own place:

1jump . . . vb

preejudge . . . vt

Another inflected form of English verbs is the third per-son singular of the present tense, which is regularlyformed by the addition of -s or -es to the base form of theverb. This inflected form is not shown except at a handfulof entries �as have and do� for which it is in some wayanomalous.

ADJECTIVES ADVERBSThe comparative and superlative forms of adjectives

and adverbs are shown in this dictionary when suffixationbrings about a doubling of a final consonant or an elisionof a final -e or a change of final -y to -i-, when the wordends in -ey, when the inflection is irregular, and whenthere are variant inflected forms:

1red . . . adj rededer; rededest1tame . . . adj tameer; tameest1kindely . . . adj kindelieer; -est1earely . . . adv earelieer; -est

14a Explanatory Notes

diceey . . . adj diceieer; -est1good . . . adj beteter . . . � best1bad . . . adj worse . . . � worst1far . . . adv farether . . . or furether . . . � farethest or furethest

The superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs of two ormore syllables are usually cut back:

3fancy adj fanecieer; -est1earely . . . adv earelieer; -est

The comparative and superlative forms of regularly in-flected adjectives and adverbs are shown when it is desir-able to indicate the pronunciation of the inflected forms:

1young . . . adj youneger ��yəŋ-gər�� younegest ��yəŋ-gəst�

The inclusion of inflected forms in -er and -est at adjectiveand adverb entries means nothing more about the use ofmore and most with these adjectives and adverbs than thattheir comparative and superlative degrees may be ex-pressed in either way� lazier or more lazy� laziest or mostlazy.

At a few adjective entries only the superlative form isshown:

3mere adj, superlative mereest

The absence of the comparative form indicates that thereis no evidence of its use.

The comparative and superlative forms of adjectivesand adverbs are not shown when the base word is un-changed by suffixation or when the word is a compoundwhose second element is readily recognizable as a regularfree form entered at its own place:

1near . . . adv

unewary . . . adj

The comparative and superlative forms of adverbs are notshown when they are identical with the inflected forms ofa preceding adjective homograph:

1hot . . . adj hoteter; hotetest2hot adv

Capitalization

Most entries in this dictionary begin with a lowercase let-ter. A few of these have an italicized label often cap, whichindicates that the word is as likely to be capitalized as not,that it is as acceptable with an uppercase initial as it is withone in lowercase. Some entries begin with an uppercaseletter, which indicates that the word is usually capitalized.The absence of an initial capital or of an often cap label in-dicates that the word is not ordinarily capitalized:

lunkehead . . . n

gareganetuan . . . adj, often cap

Moehawk . . . n

The capitalization of entries that are open or hyphenat-ed compounds is similarly indicated by the form of the en-try or by an italicized label:

obstacle course n

neo–Exepresesioneism . . . n, often cap N

off–off–Broadway n, often cap both Os

un–Amereiecan . . . adj

Dutch oven n

Old Glory n

A word that is capitalized in some senses and lowercasein others shows variations from the form of the main entryby the use of italicized labels at the appropriate senses:

reenaisesance . . . n . . . 1 cap . . . 2 often cap

Sheteland . . . n . . . 2 often not cap

Trineiety . . . n . . . 2 not cap

Attributive Nouns

The italicized label often attrib placed after the functionallabel n indicates that the noun is often used as an adjectiveequivalent in attributive position before another noun:

1botetle . . . n, often attrib

busieness . . . n, often attrib

Examples of the attributive use of these nouns are bottleopener and business ethics.

While any noun may occasionally be used attributively,the label often attrib is limited to those having broad attrib-utive use. This label is not used when an adjective homo-graph �as iron or paper� is entered. And it is not used atopen compounds �as health food� that may be used attribu-tively with an inserted hyphen �as in health-food store�.

Etymology

The matter in boldface square brackets preceding the def-inition is the etymology. Meanings given in roman typewithin these brackets are not definitions of the entry, butare meanings of the Middle English, Old English, or non-English words within the brackets.

The etymology traces a vocabulary entry as far back aspossible in English �as to Old English�, tells from what lan-guage and in what form it came into English, and �exceptin the case of such words outside the general vocabularyof English as bascule and zloty� traces the pre-Englishsource as far back as possible if the source is an Indo�European language. These etyma are printed in italics.

OLD, MIDDLE, AND MODERNENGLISH

The etymology usually gives the Middle English and theOld English forms of words in the following style:

1nap . . . vi . . . [ME nappen, fr. OE hnappian . . . ]1old . . . adj [ME, fr. OE eald . . . ]

An etymology in which a word is traced back to MiddleEnglish but not to Old English indicates that the word isfound in Middle English but not in those texts that havesurvived from the Old English period:

1slab . . . n [ME slabbe]1nag . . . n . . . [ME nagge� akin to D negge small horse]

An etymology in which a word is traced back directly toOld English with no intervening mention of Middle En-glish indicates that the word has not survived continuouslyfrom Old English times to the present. Rather, it died outafter the Old English period and has been revived in mod-ern times:

geemot . . . n [OE gem�t . . . ]

thegn . . . n [OE . . . ]

An etymology is not usually given for a word created inEnglish by the combination of existing constituents or by

Explanatory Notes 15a

functional shift. This indicates that the identity of the con-stituents is expected to be self-evident to the user.

bookeshelf . . . n . . . : an open shelf for holding books

1fireeproof . . . adj . . . : proof against or resistant to fire

off–puteting . . . adj . . . : that puts one off : ���������, ����-������

penal code n . . . : a code of laws concerning crimes and offenses andtheir punishment

3stalk n . . . 1 : the act of stalking

In the case of a family of words obviously related to acommon English word but differing from it by containingvarious easily recognizable suffixes, an etymology is usual-ly given only at the base word, even though some of thederivatives may have been formed in a language otherthan English:

1equal . . . adj �ME, fr. L aequalis, fr. aequus level, equal� . . . 1 a �1�: of the same measure, quantity, amount, or number as another

equaleiety . . . n . . . 1 : the quality or state of being equal

equaleize . . . vt . . . 1 : to make equal

While equalize was formed in Modern English, equalitywas actually borrowed into Middle English �via Anglo�French� from Latin aequalitas.

Incorporating material from major scholarly referenceworks completed in recent years, the etymologies of lateOld and Middle English words borrowed from French nowapply the label �Anglo-French� �abbreviated AF� to allmedieval French words known to have been used inFrench documents written in Britain before about 1400.This treatment acknowledges that literate English speak-ers then were typically bilingual or trilingual readers andwriters who cultivated distinctive varieties of Latin andFrench as well as of English, and that words moved easilyfrom one to another of these three languages. The label�Anglo-French� should not be taken to mean that the ety-mon is attested exclusively in Anglo-French, for in thegreat majority of cases the word has a cognate form in thecontinental northern French of Picardy and Normandy orthe French of Paris and its surroundings. Because Anglo�French is one dialect of medieval French, it falls within thedomain of wider labels �Old French� and �MiddleFrench,� which cover all dialects of French in their respec-tive time frames. A similar caution applies to derivativewords:

1joureney . . . n . . . �ME, fr. AF jurnee day, day�s journey, fr. jur day, fr.LL diurnum . . . �

This etymology does not mean that the derivation of ju-rnee from jur took place only in Anglo-French. Forms cor-responding to Anglo-French jurnee exist in other dialectsof Old and Middle French, as well as in Old Occitan, andthe word survives in Modern French as journée, �day.�

LANGUAGES OTHER THANENGLISH

The etymology gives the language from which wordsborrowed into English have come. It also gives the form ora transliteration of the word in that language if the formdiffers from that in English:

1mareble . . . n �ME, fr. AF marbre, fr. L marmor, fr. Gk marmaros�

howeitezer . . . n �D houwitser, ultim. fr. Czech houfnice ballista�

souk . . . n �Ar sTq market�

In a few cases the expression �ultim. fr.� replaces themore usual �fr.� This expression indicates that one ormore intermediate steps have been omitted in tracing thederivation of the form preceding the expression from theform following it:

trieloebite . . . n [ultim. fr. Gk trilobos three-lobed, fr. tri- + lobos lobe]

When a language name that is not itself an entry in thedictionary is used in an etymology, a short parentheticaldefinition will immediately follow the name:

kookeaeburera . . . n [Wiradhuri �Australian aboriginal language of cen-tral New South Wales� gugubarra]

However, subfamily, language, or dialect names modifiedby qualifiers that simply add geographical orientationas�Interior Salish,� �MF �Picard dial.�,� or �SouthernPaiute�will not be further defined as long as both thequalifier and the word being qualified are both entries inthe dictionary.

Words cited from certain American Indian languagesand from some other languages that are infrequentlyprinted have been rendered with the phonetic symbolsused by scholars of those languages. These symbols in-clude the following: a raised dot to the right of a vowel let-ter to mark vowel length a hook below a vowel letter tomark nasality an apostrophe over a consonant letter tomark glottal release a superscript w to the right of a con-sonant letter to mark labialization the symbol Z to render��� the symbol q to render a high central vowel the Greekletters º, ¼, and » to render voiced labial, dental, and velarfricatives the symbol À to render �th� the symbol x to ren-der � � the symbol p to render a glottal stop and the sym-bol Õ ��crossed lambda�� for a voiceless lateral affricate.Examples of these symbols can be found at etymologiesfor the words Athabascan, babassu, coho, fist, Lhasa apso,potlatch, and sego lily.

ASSUMED OR RECONSTRUCTEDFORMS

An asterisk placed before a word means that it is as-sumed to have existed or has been reconstructed by meansof comparative evidence. In some cases, the assumptionmay be due to lack of evidence:

4bore n [ME �bore wave, fr. ON b�ra] �1601�

The word is unattested before Modern English, though thelikelihood is strong that it was borrowed from Scandina-vian much earlier. The case of the word battlement issomewhat different:

batetleement . . . n [ME batelment, fr. AF �bataillement, fr. batailler tofortify with battlements more at �����]

It is highly probable that bataillement existed in Anglo�French, given that both the underlying verb batailler andthe Middle English derivative batelment are attested.

The asterisk is invariably used before words labeled VL,which stands for �Vulgar Latin,� the traditional name forthe unrecorded spoken Latin of both the uneducated andeducated, especially in the final centuries of the RomanEmpire. Vulgar Latin forms can be reconstructed on thebasis of their later outcome in the Romance languages andof their relationship with known Latin words:

1canevas . . . n �ME canevas, fr. AF canevas, chanevaz, fr. VL �cannaba-ceus hempen, fr. L cannabis hemp . . . ]

WORDS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN

When the source of a word appearing as a main entry isunknown, the expression �origin unknown� is usuallyused. Only in exceptional circumstances �as with someethnic names� does the absence of an etymology mean thatit has not been possible to furnish an informative etymolo-gy. More often, it means that no etymology is believed tobe necessary. This is the case, for instance, with most ofthe entries identified as variants and with many deriva-tives.

16a Explanatory Notes

ETYMOLOGIES OF TECHNICALWORDS

Much of the technical vocabulary of the sciences andother specialized studies consists of words or word ele-ments that are current in two or more languages, with onlysuch slight modifications as are necessary to adapt them tothe structure of the individual language in each case.Many words and word elements of this kind have becomesufficiently a part of the general vocabulary of English asto require entry in an abridged dictionary. Because of thevast extent of the relevant published material in many lan-guages and in many scientific and other specialized fields,it is impracticable to ascertain the language of origin of ev-ery such term. Yet it would not be accurate to formulate astatement about the origin of any such term in a way thatcould be interpreted as implying that it was coined in En-glish. Accordingly, whenever a term that is entered in thisdictionary belongs recognizably to this class of interna-tionally current terms and whenever no positive evidenceis at hand to show that it was coined in English, the ety-mology recognizes its international status and the possibil-ity that it originated elsewhere than in English by use ofthe label ISV �for International Scientific Vocabulary�:

megaewatt . . . n [ISV]

phyeloegeeneteic . . . adj [ISV, fr. NL phylogenesis . . . ]1-ol n suffix [ISV, fr. alcohol]

COMPRESSION OF INFORMATION

An etymology giving the name of a language �includingME or OE� and not giving the foreign �or Middle Englishor Old English� form indicates that this form is the same asthat of the entry word:

kaepok . . . n [Malay]1poegrom . . . n [Yiddish, fr. Russ . . . ]1dumb . . . adj [ME, fr. OE . . . ]

An etymology giving the name of a language �includingME or OE� and the form in that language but not givingthe foreign �or Middle English or Old English� meaning in-dicates that this meaning is the same as that expressed inthe first definition in the entry:

1weaery . . . adj . . . [ME wery, fr. OE w�rig . . . ] . . . 1 : exhausted instrength . . .

When a word from a foreign language �or Middle En-glish or Old English� is a key element in the etymologies ofseveral related entries that are found close together, themeaning of the word is usually given at only one of the en-tries:

veeloece . . . adv or adj [It, fr. L veloc-, velox]

veeloceiepede . . . n [F vélocipède, fr. L veloc-, velox + ped-, pes foot �more at ����]

veeloceiety . . . n . . . [MF velocité, fr. L velocitat-, velocitas, fr. veloc-,velox quick� prob. akin to L veg�re to enliven � more at ����]

When an etymology includes the expression �by alter.�and the altered form is not cited, the form is the term giv-en in small capital letters as the definition:

ole . . . adj [by alter.] . . . : ��

When the origin of a word is traced to the name of a per-son or place not further identified, additional informationmay be found in the Biographical Names or GeographicalNames section in the back matter:

faread . . . n [Michael Faraday]

jodhepur . . . n [Jodhpur, India]

RELATED WORDS

When a word of Indo-European origin has been tracedback to the earliest language in which it is attested, wordsdescended from the same Indo-European base in otherlanguages �especially Old High German, Latin, Greek, andSanskrit� are usually given:

naevel . . . n [ME, fr. OE nafela� akin to OHG nabalo navel, L umbili-cus, Gk omphalos]

1wind . . . n . . . [ME, fr. OE� akin to OHG wint wind, L ventus, Gk a�naito blow, Skt v�ti it blows]

Sometimes, however, to avoid space-consuming repetition,the expression �more at� directs the user to another entrywhere the cognates are given:

hoely . . . adj . . . [ME, fr. OE h�lig� akin to OE h�l whole � more at����]

Besides the use of �akin to� to denote relatedness, someetymologies make special use of �akin to� as part of alonger formula �of . . . origin� akin to. . . . � This formulaindicates that a word was borrowed from some languagebelonging to a group of languages whose name is insertedin the blank before the word origin, that it is impossible tosay that the word in question is a borrowing of a particularattested word in a particular language of the source group,and that the form cited in the blank after the expressionakin to is related to the word in question as attested withinthe source group:

baenana . . . n . . . [Sp or Pg� Sp, fr. Pg, of African origin� akin to Wolofbanaana banana]

2briar n [ . . . F bruyère heath, fr. MF bruiere, fr. VL �brucaria, fr. LLbrucus heather, of Celt origin� akin to OIr froech heather� akin to Gkereik� heather]

This last example shows the two contrasting uses of �akinto.� The word cited immediately after �of Celt origin� akinto� is an attested Celtic word descended from the same et-ymon as the unattested Celtic source of the Latin word.The word cited after the second �akin to� is evidence thatthe Celtic etymon has deeper relations within Indo�European.

Dates

At most main entries a date will be found enclosed in pa-rentheses immediately preceding the boldface colon or thenumber that introduces the first sense:

exepoesé also exepoese . . . n [F exposé, fr. pp. of exposer] �1803� 1 : aformal statement of facts 2 : an exposure of something discreditable

This is the date of the earliest recorded use in English, asfar as it could be determined, of the sense which the dateprecedes. Several caveats are appropriate at this point.First, a few classes of main entries that are not completewords �as prefixes, suffixes, and combining forms� or arenot generic words �as trademarks� are not given dates. Sec-ond, the date given applies only to the first sense of theword entered in this dictionary and not necessarily to thewords very earliest meaning in English. Many words, es-pecially those with long histories, have obsolete, archaic,or uncommon senses that are not entered in this dictio-nary, and such senses have been excluded from consider-ation in determining the date:

greenehorn . . . n [obs. greenhorn animal with green or young horns]�1682� 1 : an inexperienced or naive person

The 1682 date is for sense 1, not for the word as a whole.Greenhorn also has an obsolete sense, �animal with green

Explanatory Notes 17a

or young horns,� that was recorded as early as 1460, butsince this sense is not entered, it is ignored for purposes ofdating. Third, the printed date should not be taken tomark the very first time that the word�or even thesense�was used in English. Many words were certainly inspoken use for decades or even longer before they passedinto the written language. The date is for the earliest writ-ten or printed use that the editors have been able to dis-cover. This fact means further that any date is subject tochange as evidence of still earlier use may emerge, andmany dates given now can confidently be expected to yieldto others in future printings and editions.

A date will appear in one of three different styles:

nuclear family n �1947� : a family group that consists only of father,mother, and children

1moonelight . . . n �14c� : the light of the moon

1sheet . . . n �ME shete, fr. OE sc�te, sc�ete� . . . � �bef. 12c� 1 a : a broadpiece of cloth� esp : ��������

The style that names a year �as 1947� is the one used forthe period from the sixteenth century to the present. Thestyle that names only a century �as 14c� is the one used forthe period from the twelfth century through the fifteenthcentury, a span that roughly approximates the period ofMiddle English. The style �bef. 12c� is used for the periodbefore the twelfth century back to the earliest records ofEnglish, a span that approximates the period of Old En-glish. Words first attested after 1500 can usually be datedto a single year because the precise dates of publication ofmodern printed texts are known. If a word must be datedfrom a modern text of uncertain chronology, it will be as-signed the latest possible date of the text�s publication pre-fixed by the abbreviation ca. �for circa�. For words fromthe Old and Middle English periods the examples of use onwhich the dates depend very often occur in manuscriptswhich are themselves of uncertain date and which mayrecord a text whose date of composition is highly conjec-tural. To date words from these periods by year would fre-quently give a quite misleading impression of the state ofour knowledge, and so the broader formulas involvingcenturies are used instead.

Each date reflects a particular instance of the use of aword, most often within a continuous text. In cases wherethe earliest appearance of a word dated by year is not fromcontinuous text but from a source �as a dictionary or glos-sary� that defines or explains the word instead of simplyusing it, the year is preceded by ca.:

magnesium hydroxide n �ca. 1909� : a slightly alkaline crystallinecompound Mg�OH�2 . . .

In such instances, ca. indicates that while the source pro-viding the date attests that the word was in use in the rele-vant sense at that time, it does not offer an example of thenormal use of the word and thus gives no better than anapproximate date for such use. For the example above nouse has so far been found that is earlier than its appear-ance as an entry in Webster�s New International Dictio-nary, published in 1909, so the date is given with the qual-ifying abbreviation.

Usage

USAGE LABELSThree types of status labels are used in this dictionary

�temporal, regional, and stylistic�to signal that a wordor a sense of a word is not part of the standard vocabularyof English.

The temporal label obs for obsolete� means that thereis no evidence of use since 1755:

1peredu . . . n . . . obs

goveernement . . . n . . . 2 obs

The label obs is a comment on the word being defined.When a thing, as distinguished from the word used to des-ignate it, is obsolete, appropriate orientation is usually giv-en in the definition:

1cateaepult . . . n . . . 1 : an ancient military device for hurling missiles

farethinegale . . . n . . . : a support �as of hoops� worn esp. in the 16thcentury beneath a skirt to expand it at the hipline

The temporal label archaic means that a word or senseonce in common use is found today only sporadically or inspecial contexts:

1goody . . . n . . . archaic

lonegietude . . . n . . . 2 archaic

A word or sense limited in use to a specific region of theU.S. has a regional label. Some regional labels correspondloosely to areas defined in Hans Kurath�s Word Geographyof the Eastern United States. The adverb chiefly precedes alabel when the word has some currency outside the speci-fied region, and a double label is used to indicate consider-able currency in each of two specific regions:

pung . . . n . . . NewEng

banequette . . . n . . . 1 . . . b Southern

3pasetor . . . n . . . chiefly Southwest

doegie . . . n . . . chiefly West

galelery . . . n . . . 2 . . . b Southern � Midland

1potelatch . . . n . . . 2 Northwest

smearecase . . . n . . . chiefly Midland

cruleler . . . n . . . 2 Northern � Midland

Words current in all regions of the U.S. have no label.A word or sense limited in use to one of the other coun-

tries of the English-speaking world has an appropriate re-gional label:

cutety sark . . . n . . . chiefly Scot

lareriekin . . . n . . . chiefly Austral

inedaeba . . . n . . . chiefly SoAfr

spalepeen . . . n . . . chiefly Irish

1bonenet . . . n . . . 2 a Brit

book off vi . . . chiefly Canad

1dinekum . . . adj . . . Austral � NewZeal

gareron . . . n . . . Scot � Irish

The label Brit indicates that a word or sense is current inthe United Kingdom or in more than one nation of theCommonwealth �as the United Kingdom, Australia, andCanada�.

The label dial for dialect� indicates that the pattern ofuse of a word or sense is too complex for summary label-ing: it usually includes several regional varieties of Ameri-can English or of American and British English:

leasteways . . . adv . . . dial

The label dial Brit indicates currency in several dialectsof the Commonwealth� dial Eng indicates currency in oneor more provincial dialects of England:

boegle . . . n . . . dial Brit

1hob . . . n . . . 1 dial Eng

The stylistic label slang is used with words or senses thatare especially appropriate in contexts of extreme informal-ity, that are usually not limited to a particular region or

18a Explanatory Notes

area of interest, and that are composed typically of short-ened or altered forms or extravagant or facetious figuresof speech:

4barb n . . . slang : �����������2skinny n . . . slang : inside information : ��

breadebaseket . . . n . . . 1 slang : ���� �

There is no satisfactory objective test for slang, especiallywith reference to a word out of context. No word, in fact,is invariably slang, and many standard words can be givenslang applications.

The stylistic label nonstand for �nonstandard� is usedfor a few words or senses that are disapproved by manybut that have some currency in reputable contexts:

learn . . . vb . . . 2 a nonstand

irereegardeless . . . adv . . . nonstand

The stylistic labels disparaging, offensive, obscene, andvulgar are used for those words or senses that in commonuse are intended to hurt or shock or that are likely to giveoffense even when they are used without such an intent:

grinego . . . n . . . often disparaging

piss away vt . . . sometimes vulgar

A subject label or guide phrase is sometimes used to in-dicate the specific application of a word or sense:

2break n . . . 5 . . . d mining

anetiemageneteic . . . adj . . . of a watch

1huemor . . . n . . . 2 a in medieval physiology

In general, however, subject orientation lies in the defini-tion:

Diedo . . . n . . . : a legendary queen of Carthage in Virgil�s Aeneid whokills herself when Aeneas leaves her

jeeté . . . n . . . : a springing jump in ballet made from one foot to theother in any direction

ILLUSTRATIONS OF USAGE

Definitions are sometimes followed by verbal illustra-tions that show a typical use of the word in context. Theseillustrations are enclosed in angle brackets, and the wordbeing illustrated is usually replaced by a lightface swungdash. The swung dash stands for the boldface entry word,and it may be followed by an italicized suffix:

1key . . . n . . . 3 a . . . �the � to a riddle�

comemit . . . vt . . . 1 . . . c . . . �� it to memory�

2plummet vi . . . 2 . . . �prices �ed�

weak . . . adj . . . 4 . . . b . . . �2� . . . �history was my �est subject�

The swung dash is not used when the form of the boldfaceentry word is changed in suffixation, and it is not used foropen compounds:

1true . . . adj . . . 8 . . . �in the truest sense�

turn off vt . . . 4 . . . �turn the water off�

Illustrative quotations are also used to show words intypical contexts:

coneflicteed . . . adj . . . �this unhappy and � modern woman JohnUpdike�

Omissions in quotations are indicated by ellipses:

alieneation . . . n . . . 1 . . . �� . . . from the values of one�s society andfamily S. L. Halleck�

USAGE NOTES

Definitions are sometimes followed by usage notes thatgive supplementary information about such matters as idi-om, syntax, semantic relationship, and status. A usagenote is introduced by a lightface dash:

1inch . . . n . . . 5 : . . . usu. used in the phrase give an inch

2drum . . . vt . . . 2 : . . . usu. used with out

1so . . . adv . . . 1 a : . . . often used as a substitute for a precedingclause

1sforezanedo . . . adj or adv . . . : . . . used as a direction in music

hajji . . . n . . . : . . . often used as a title

Two or more usage notes are separated by a semicolon:

2thine pron . . . : that which belongs to thee used without a followingnoun as a pronoun equivalent in meaning to the adjective thy� usedesp. in ecclesiastical or literary language and still surviving in thespeech of Friends esp. among themselves

Sometimes a usage note calls attention to one or moreterms with the same denotation as the main entry:

water moccasin n . . . 1 : a venomous semiaquatic pit viper �Agkistro-don piscivorus� chiefly of the southeastern U.S. that is closely related tothe copperhead called also cottonmouth, cottonmouth moccasin

The called-also terms are shown in italic type. If such aterm falls alphabetically more than a column away fromthe main entry, it is entered at its own place with the soledefinition being a synonymous cross-reference to the en-try where it appears in the usage note:

cotetonemouth . . . n . . . : ����� � ����

cottonmouth moccasin n . . . : ����� � ����

Sometimes a usage note is used in place of a definition.Some function words �as conjunctions and prepositions�have little or no semantic content most interjections ex-press feelings but are otherwise untranslatable into mean-ing and some other words �as oaths and honorific titles�are more amenable to comment than to definition:

1of . . . prep . . . 1 used as a function word to indicate a point of reck-oning

1oyez . . . vb imper . . . used by a court or public crier to gain atten-tion before a proclamation

1or . . . conj . . . 1 used as a function word to indicate an alternative

gosh . . . interj . . . used as a mild oath to express surprise

sir . . . n . . . 2 a used as a usu. respectful form of address

USAGE PARAGRAPHS

Brief usage paragraphs have been placed at a number ofentries for terms that are considered to present problemsof confused or disputed usage. A usage paragraph typical-ly summarizes the historical background of the item andits associated body of opinion, compares these with avail-able evidence of current usage, and often adds a few wordsof suitable advice for the dictionary user.

Each paragraph is signaled by an indented boldface ital-ic usage. Where appropriate, discussion is keyed by sensenumber to the definition of the meaning in question. Mostparagraphs incorporate appropriate verbal illustrationsand illustrative quotations to clarify and exemplify thepoints being made:

agegraevate . . . vt . . . 1 obs a : to make heavy : ������ b : ��- ����� 2 : to make worse, more serious, or more severe : intensifyunpleasantly �problems have been aggravated by neglect� 3 a : torouse to displeasure or anger by usu. persistent and often petty goad-ing b : to produce inflammation inusage Although aggravate has been used in sense 3a since the 17thcentury, it has been the object of disapproval only since about 1870. Itis used in expository prose �when his silly conceit . . . about his not�very-good early work has begun to aggravate us William Styron�

Explanatory Notes 19a

but seems to be more common in speech and casual writing �a goodprofession for him, because bus drivers get aggravated �Jackie Glea-son �interview, 1986�� �� now this letter comes to aggravate me athousand times worse �Mark Twain �letter, 1864��. Sense 2 is farmore common than sense 3a in published prose. Such is not the case,however, with aggravation and aggravating. Aggravation is used insense 3 somewhat more than in its earlier senses� aggravating has prac-tically no use other than to express annoyance.

When a second word is also discussed in a paragraph,the main entry for that word is followed by a run-on usagesee . . . , which refers to the entry where the paragraphmay be found:

2afefect . . . vb . . . usage see ������

Definitions

DIVISION OF SENSES

A boldface colon is used in this dictionary to introduce adefinition:

1cooeper . . . n . . . : one that makes or repairs wooden casks or tubs

It is also used to separate two or more definitions of a sin-gle sense:

unecage . . . vt . . . : to release from or as if from a cage : free from re-straint

Boldface Arabic numerals separate the senses of a wordthat has more than one sense:

1gloom . . . vb . . . vi . . . 1 : to look, feel, or act sullen or despondent 2: to be or become overcast 3 : to loom up dimly

Boldface lowercase letters separate the subsenses of aword:

1grand . . . adj . . . 5 a : ����, �� ���� . . . b : marked by a regalform and dignity c : fine or imposing in appearance or impression d: �����, ������

Lightface numerals in parentheses indicate a further di-vision of subsenses:

take out vt 1 a �1� : ������, � ����� �2� : �������, ���� �3�: �������, ������

A lightface colon following a definition and immediatelypreceding two or more subsenses indicates that the sub-senses are subsumed by the preceding definition:

2crunch n . . . 3 : a tight or critical situation: as a : a critical point inthe buildup of pressure between opposing elements . . . b : a severeeconomic squeeze . . . c : ������

seequoia . . . n . . . : either of two huge coniferous California trees ofthe bald cypress family that may reach a height of over 300 feet �90meters�: a : ����� ������ b : ������� 3a

The word as may or may not follow the lightface colon. Itspresence �as at 2crunch� indicates that the following sub-senses are typical or significant examples. Its absence �asat sequoia� indicates that the subsenses which follow areexhaustive.

The system of separating the various senses of a word bynumerals and letters is a lexical convenience. It reflectssomething of their semantic relationship, but it does notevaluate senses or set up a hierarchy of importance amongthem.

Sometimes a particular semantic relationship betweensenses is suggested by the use of one of four italic sense di-viders: esp, specif, also, or broadly.

The sense divider esp �for especially� is used to introducethe most common meaning subsumed in the more generalpreceding definition:

2slick adj . . . 3 a : characterized by subtlety or nimble wit : �������esp : ����

The sense divider specif �for specifically� is used to intro-duce a common but highly restricted meaning subsumedin the more general preceding definition:

ponetiff . . . n . . . 2 : ��� � specif, often cap : � � 1

The sense divider also is used to introduce a meaningthat is closely related to but may be considered less impor-tant than the preceding sense:

chiena . . . n . . . 1 : ��������� also : vitreous porcelain wares �as dish-es, vases, or ornaments� for domestic use

The sense divider broadly is used to introduce an ex-tended or wider meaning of the preceding definition:

flotesam . . . n . . . 1 : floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo� broadly: floating debris

ORDER OF SENSES

The order of senses within an entry is historical: thesense known to have been first used in English is enteredfirst. This is not to be taken to mean, however, that eachsense of a multisense word developed from the immediate-ly preceding sense. It is altogether possible that sense 1 of aword has given rise to sense 2 and sense 2 to sense 3, butfrequently sense 2 and sense 3 may have arisen indepen-dently of one another from sense 1.

When a numbered sense is further subdivided into let-tered subsenses, the inclusion of particular subsenses with-in a sense is based upon their semantic relationship to oneanother, but their order is likewise historical: subsense 1ais earlier than 1b, 1b is earlier than 1c, and so forth. Divi-sions of subsenses indicated by lightface numerals in pa-rentheses are also in historical order with respect to oneanother. Subsenses may be out of historical order, howev-er, with respect to the broader numbered senses:

1job . . . n . . . �ca. 1627� 1 a : a piece of work� esp : a small miscella-neous piece of work undertaken on order at a stated rate b : the ob-ject or material on which work is being done c : something producedby or as if by work �do a better � next time� d : an example of ausu. specified type : ���� �a 14,000-square-foot � with . . . sevenbedrooms �Rick Telander� 2 a : something done for private advan-tage �suspected the whole incident was a put-up �� b : a criminalenterprise� specif : ������� c : a damaging or destructive bit ofwork �did a � on him� 3 a �1� : something that has to be done :��� �2� : an undertaking requiring unusual exertion �it was a real� to talk over that noise� b : a specific duty, role, or function c : aregular remunerative position d chiefly Brit : state of affairs � usu.used with bad or good �it was a good � you didnt hit the old man�E. L. Thomas� 4 : plastic surgery for cosmetic purposes �a nose��

At job the date indicates that the earliest unit of meaning,sense 1a, was born in the seventeenth century, and it isreadily apparent how the following subsenses are linked toit and to each other by the idea of work. Even subsense 1dis so linked, because while it does not apply exclusively tomanufactured items, it often does so, as the illustrativequotation suggests. Yet 1d did not exist before the 1920s,while 2a and 3a �1� both belong to the seventeenth centu-ry, although they are later than 1a. Even subsense 3d isearlier than 1d, as it is found in the works of Dickens.

Historical order also determines whether transitive orintransitive senses are given first at verbs which have bothkinds. If the earliest sense is transitive, all the transitivesenses precede all the intransitive senses.

OMISSION OF A SENSEOccasionally the dictionary user, having turned to an

entry, may not find a particular sense that was expected orhoped for. This usually means no more than that the edi-tors judged the sense insufficiently common or otherwiseimportant to include in a dictionary of this scope. Such asense will frequently be found at the appropriate entry in adictionary �as Websters Third New International Dictio-

20a Explanatory Notes

nary� that has room for less common words and meanings.One special case is worth noting, however.

At times it would be possible to include the definition ofa meaning at more than one entry �as at a simple verb anda verb-adverb collocation or at a verb and an adjective de-rived from a participle of that verb�. To save space for oth-er information such double coverage is avoided, and themeaning is generally defined only at the base form. For thederivative term the meaning is then considered to be es-sentially self-explanatory and is not defined. For examplecast off has a sense �to get rid of� in such typical contextsas �cast off all restraint,� and so has the simple verb cast incontexts like �cast all restraint to the winds.� This meaningis defined as sense 1e�2� of cast and is omitted from the en-try cast off, where the dictionary user will find a number ofsenses that cannot be considered self-explanatory in rela-tion to the entries for cast and off. Likewise, the entry forthe adjective picked gives only one sense ��������,�������which is not the meaning of picked in such acontext as �the picked fruit lay stacked in boxes awaitingshipment.� A definition suitable for this use is not given atpicked because one is given at the first homograph pick,the verb from which the adjective picked is derived, assense 3a��to gather by plucking.�

INFORMATION AT INDIVIDUALSENSES

Information coming between the entry word and thefirst definition of a multisense word applies to all sensesand subsenses. Information applicable only to some sensesor subsenses is given between the appropriate boldface nu-meral or letter and the symbolic colon. A variety of kindsof information is offered in this way:

2palm n . . . 3 [L palmus, fr. palma]2rally n . . . 4 also ralelye1disk or disc . . . n . . . 4 . . . a usu disc

crueciefixeion . . . n . . . 1 a cap

1tile . . . n . . . 1 pl tiles or tile a . . .

deleiecaetesesen . . . n pl . . . 1 . . . 2 sing, pl delicatessens

fixeing . . . n . . . 2 pl

2die . . . n, pl dice . . . or dies . . . 1 pl dice . . . 2 pl dies . . . 3 pl dies

1folk . . . n, pl folk or folks . . . 5 folks pl

At palm the subetymology indicates that the third sense,while ultimately derived from the same source �Latinpalma� as the other senses of the word, has a different im-mediate etymon �Latin palmus�, from which it receives itsmeaning. At rally one is told that in the fourth sense theword has a variant spelling not used for other senses andthat this variant is a secondary or less common one. Atdisk the italic label of sense 4a indicates that, while thespelling disk is overall somewhat the more common �sinceit precedes disc out of alphabetical order at the beginningof the entry�, disc is the usual spelling for this particularsense. At crucifixion the label cap points out the one mean-ing of the word in which it is capitalized. At the first ho-mograph tile no plural is shown at the beginning of the en-try because the usual plural, tiles, is regular. The subsensesof sense 1, however, have a zero plural as well as the usualone, and so both plurals appear in boldface at sense 1. Atdelicatessen the situation is different: the entry as a wholeis labeled a plural noun, but sense 2 is used as a singular.In this sense delicatessen can take the plural ending -swhen needed, a fact that is indicated by the appearance ofthe plural in boldface at the sense. At fixing the italic ab-breviation simply means that when used in this sense theword is always written in its plural form, fixings. At thesecond homograph die the actual distribution of the vari-ant plurals can be given sense by sense in italic type be-cause both variants are shown in boldface earlier in theentry. At the first homograph folk a singular noun is

shown with variant plurals of nearly equal frequency,when all senses are taken into account. The fifth sense,however, is unique in being always plural in form and con-struction. The form of the plural for this sense is folks, asshown, and the placement of the form before the label in-stead of after it �as at the senses of die� means that thissense is always plural.

When an italicized label or guide phrase follows a bold-face numeral, the label or phrase applies only to that spe-cific numbered sense and its subsenses. It does not applyto any other boldface numbered senses:

1boot . . . n . . . 1 archaic . . . 2 chiefly dial . . . 3 obs

1faevor . . . n . . . 2 archaic a . . . b �1� . . . �2� . . . 3

At boot the archaic label applies only to sense 1, the chieflydial label only to sense 2, and the obs label only to sense 3.At favor the archaic label applies to all the subsenses ofsense 2 but not to sense 3.

When an italicized label or guide phrase follows a bold-face letter, the label or phrase applies only to that specificlettered sense and its subsenses. It does not apply to anyother boldface lettered senses:

2stour n . . . 1 a archaic . . . b dial Brit

The archaic label applies to sense 1a but not to sense 1b.The dial Brit label applies to sense 1b but not to sense 1a.

When an italicized label or guide phrase follows a paren-thesized numeral, the label or phrase applies only to thatspecific numbered sense:

inecarenaetion . . . n . . . 1 a �1� . . . �2� cap

The cap label applies to sense 1a�2� and to no other sub-senses of the word.

EXPANSIONS OF ABBREVIATIONSEntries for abbreviations lack definitions. Instead such

an entry is given an expansion, which is simply the fullword or phrase from which the abbreviation was originallycreated. Because an expansion is not a definition, it is notintroduced by a boldface colon. When more than one ex-pansion is given for an abbreviation, the expansions arelisted in alphabetical order and are separated by boldfacenumerals, except that closely related expansions aregrouped together:

cir abbr 1 circle� circular 2 circuit 3 circumference

For an abbreviation that originated in another language,the foreign expansion is given in an etymology, followedby an idiomatic English equivalent. When such an expan-sion is listed along with other expansions in a single entry,alphabetical order within the entry is based on the foreignexpansion rather than its English equivalent.

pp abbr 1 pages 2 per person 3 [L per procurationem] by proxy 4 pia-nissimo

Names of Plants, Animals �Microorganisms

The most familiar names of living and formerly livingthings are the common, or vernacular, names determinedby popular usage, in which one organism may have severalnames �as mountain lion, cougar, and painter�, different or-ganisms may have the same name �as dolphin�, and theremay be variation in meaning or overlapping of the catego-ries denoted by the names �as whale, dolphin, and por-poise�.

In contrast, the scientific names of biological classifica-tion are governed by four highly prescriptive, internation-

Explanatory Notes 21a

ally recognized codes of nomenclature for botany, zoolo-gy, bacteriology, and virology. The vocabularies of thesenomenclatures have been developed and used by scientistsfor the purpose of identifying and indicating the relation-ships of plants, animals, and microorganisms. These sys-tems of names classify each kind of organism into a hierar-chy of groups�taxa�with each kind of organism havingone�and only one�correct name and belonging toone�and only one�taxon at each level of classificationin the hierarchy.

The taxonomic names of biological classification areused in this dictionary at entries that define commonnames of plants, animals, and microorganisms, as well asdiseases of or products relating to plants, animals, or mi-croorganisms that do not themselves have common namesthat qualify for entry here. Names from several differentcodes of nomenclature may appear in the same definition.Each is enclosed in parentheses, usually following an ori-enting noun:

Rocky Mountain spotted fever n . . . : an acute disease . . . that iscaused by a rickettsia �Rickettsia rickettsii� usu. transmitted by an ixo-did tick and esp. either the American dog tick or a wood tick �Derma-centor andersoni�

sandefly fever . . . n . . . : a disease . . . caused by any of several single-stranded RNA viruses �genus Phlebovirus of the family Bunyaviridae�transmitted by the bite of a sand fly �esp. Phlebotomus papatasii� . . .

Within the parentheses the prescriptive principles of therelevant nomenclature hold, but as soon as the readersteps outside the parentheses the rules of general usagehold. For example, the genus name Apatosaurus for agroup of large herbivorous dinosaurs is now the validname in biological classification for the formerly acceptedBrontosaurus. While apatosaurus is available as a commonname, it has been slow in displacing brontosaurus in popu-lar usage. So the main definition of the dinosaur is placedat the vocabulary entry for brontosaurus, while only across-reference in small capitals appears at apatosaurus.However, within the parenthetical identification, the ge-nus name Apatosaurus appears first, with Brontosaurus list-ed second as a synonym:

apatoesauerus . . . n . . . : ������������

bronetoesauerus . . . also bronetoesaur . . . n . . . : any of a genus �Apa-tosaurus syn. Brontosaurus� of large sauropod dinosaurs of the Jurassic� called also apatosaurus

Taxonomic names are used in definitions in this dictio-nary to provide precise identifications through which de-fined terms may be pursued in technical writings. Becauseof their specialized nature, taxonomic names as such arenot included as dictionary entries. However, many com-mon names entered in this dictionary have been deriveddirectly from genus names and other taxonomic names,often with little or no modification. In written text it isparticularly important to distinguish between a commonname and the taxonomic name from which it is derived. Incontrast to the styling rules for taxonomic names �dis-cussed below�, common names �as �clostridium,� �droso-phila,� and �enterovirus�� are not usually capitalized oritalicized, and common names derived from genus namescan have a plural form even though genus names them-selves are never pluralized.

The entries defining plants, animals, and microorgan-isms are usually oriented to higher taxa by common, ver-nacular terms within the definitions �as �alga� at seaweed,�thrush� at robin, and �picornaviruses� at enterovirus� orby technical adjectives �as �composite� at daisy and �os-cine� at warbler�.

When the vernacular name of a plant or animal is usedto identify the vernacular name of the taxonomic family towhich the plant or animal belongs, that information willbe given in parentheses in the definition of the plant or an-imal, and definitions for other organisms within that fami-ly will refer to the vernacular family name:

2rose . . . n . . . 1 a : any of a genus �Rosa of the family Rosaceae, therose family� of usu. prickly shrubs . . .

apeple . . . n, often attrib . . . 1 : the fleshy usu. rounded red, yellow, orgreen edible pome of a usu. cultivated tree �genus Malus� of the rosefamily� also : an apple tree

1squirerel . . . n . . . 1 : any of various small or medium-sized rodents�family Sciuridae, the squirrel family�: as . . .

chipemunk . . . n . . . : any of a genus �Tamias� of small striped No.American and Asian rodents of the squirrel family

LINNAEAN NOMENCLATURE OFPLANTS, ANIMALS � BACTERIA

The nomenclatural codes for botany, zoology, and bac-teriology follow the binomial nomenclature of CarolusLinnaeus, who employed a New Latin vocabulary for thenames of organisms and the names of ranks in the hierar-chy of classification.

The fundamental taxon is the genus. It includes a groupof closely related kinds of plants �as Prunus, which in-cludes the wild and cultivated cherries, apricots, peaches,and almonds�, a group of closely related kinds of animals�as Canis, which includes domestic dogs, coyotes, jackals,and wolves�, or a group of closely related kinds of bacteria�as Streptococcus, which includes numerous pathogens ofhumans and domestic animals�. The genus name is an ital-icized and capitalized singular noun.

The unique name of each kind of organism or species inthe Linnaean systems is the binomial or species name,which consists of two parts: a genus name and an italicizedlowercase word�the specific epithet�denoting the spe-cies. A trinomial is used to name a variety or a subspeciesand consists of a binomial plus an italicized lowercaseword denoting the variety or subspecies. For example, thecultivated cabbage �Brassica oleracea capita�, the cauli-flower �Brassica oleracea botrytis�, and brussels sprouts�Brassica oleracea gemmifera� belong to the same species�Brassica oleracea� of cole.

The genus name in a binomial or trinomial may be ab-breviated to its initial letter if it has previously beenspelled out in full within the same text. In this dictionary, agenus name is abbreviated only when it is used more thanonce in senses not separated by a boldface sense number.

naseturetium . . . n . . . : any of a genus �Tropaeolum of the family Tro-paeolaceae, the nasturtium family� . . . � esp : either of two widely culti-vated ornamentals �T. majus and T. minus�

Names of taxa higher than the genus �as family, order,and class� are capitalized plural nouns that are often usedwith singular verbs and that are not abbreviated in normaluse. They are not italicized.

1beeetle . . . n . . . 1 : any of an order �Coleoptera� of insects . . .

A genus name in good standing cannot be the name oftwo different groups of animals, groups of plants, orgroups of bacteria. At least one of the applications must beinvalid. However, since the nomenclatural codes are inde-pendent, an animal genus and a plant genus, for example,may validly receive the same name. Thus, a number ofcabbage butterflies �as Pieris rapae� are placed in a genusof animals that has the same name as the plant genus towhich the Japanese andromeda �Pieris japonica� belongs.Although no two higher taxa of plants or of bacteria arepermitted to have the same name, the rules of zoologicalnomenclature do not apply to taxa above the family, andso, for example, it is possible for widely separated groupsof animals to be placed in families or orders with identicaltaxonomic names.

Sometimes two or more different New Latin names canbe found used in current literature for the same organismor group. This happens when old monographs and fieldguides are kept in print after name changes occur, whenthere are legitimate differences of opinion about the valid-ity of the names, and when the rules of priority are not ap-plied. To help the reader in recognizing an organism or

22a Explanatory Notes

group, some entries in this dictionary give two taxonomicnames connected by �syn.� �for �synonym��:

waeteremeleon . . . n . . . 1 : a large oblong or roundish fruit with a hardgreen or white rind . . . 2 : a widely cultivated African vine �Citrulluslunatus syn. C. vulgaris� of the gourd family that bears watermelons

VIRUS NOMENCLATURE

The system of naming viruses evolved in a series of re-ports by a committee of the International Union of Micro-biological Societies. The report published in 2000 with thetitle Virus Taxonomy: Seventh Report of the InternationalCommittee on Taxonomy of Viruses is the one followed inthis dictionary. The code of nomenclature developed thereis independent of the three Linnaean systems governingthe taxonomy of plants, animals, and bacteria and differsin the way names are constructed and written.

Except as noted below, the names for species, genera,and families of viruses used in this dictionary are thosethat are recognized by the International Committee onTaxonomy of Viruses. Such names appear in italics and arepreceded by the name of the taxon ��species,� �genus,� or�family�� in roman before the italicized name.

The name of a species consists of an italicized phrase inwhich the first word is capitalized, other words are lower-case unless derived from a proper name, and the last wordis virus.

The name of a genus is usually a single capitalized wordending in -virus.

The name of a family is a single capitalized word endingin -viridae.

smallepox . . . n . . . : an acute contagious febrile disease of humansthat is caused by a poxvirus �species Variola virus of the genusOrthopoxvirus�, . . .

The name of the family in this case can be found at the en-try for poxvirus:

poxevierus . . . n . . . : any of a family �Poxviridae� of brick-shaped orovoid double-stranded DNA viruses . . .

Unlike the Linnaean codes, virus nomenclature does nothave in place a protocol for handling synonyms, namesthat were once in good standing but have been replaced byothers. Several names �as family Myxoviridae and familyPapovaviridae� that were in good standing in the Sixth Re-port of the International Committee on Virus Taxonomy arenot found in any of the indices of the Seventh Report. Atbest a word or two of explanation is offered in the taxa re-placing them. In order to provide continuity, commonnames for members of defunct taxa are retained in thisdictionary when those names are still in common use:

paepoevaevierus . . . n : any of a former family �Papovaviridae� ofdouble-stranded DNA viruses associated with various neoplasms ofmammals that included the papillomaviruses and polyomaviruses

The names of the two families to which the papovavirusesare now assigned can be found at the definitions of papillo-mavirus and polyomavirus.

Cross-Reference

Four different kinds of cross-references are used in thisdictionary: directional, synonymous, cognate, and inflec-tional. In each instance the cross-reference is readily rec-ognized by the lightface small capitals in which it is print-ed.

A cross-reference following a lightface dash and begin-ning with see or compare is a directional cross-reference. Itdirects the dictionary user to look elsewhere for furtherinformation. A compare cross-reference is regularly ap-pended to a definition� a see cross-reference may standalone:

weletereweight . . . n . . . � compare �����������, ����������

1rieal . . . n . . . � see ���� table

A cross-reference immediately following a boldface co-lon is a synonymous cross-reference. It may stand alone asthe only definitional matter for an entry or for a sense orsubsense of an entry� it may follow an analytical defini-tion� it may be one of two synonymous cross-referencesseparated by a comma:

garebanezo . . . n . . . : �� ����1neeglect . . . vt . . . 1 : to give little attention or respect to : �������2main adj . . . 1 : ����, ���� ����

A synonymous cross-reference indicates that a definitionat the entry cross-referred to can be substituted as a defini-tion for the entry or the sense or subsense in which thecross-reference appears.

A cross-reference following an italic var of is a cognatecross-reference:

kaftan var of �����

Sometimes a cognate cross-reference has a limiting labelpreceding var of as a specific indication that the variant isnot standard English:

hauleier . . . Brit var of ������

2hist . . . dial var of ����

shereris . . . archaic var of ������

A cross-reference following an italic label that identifiesan entry as an inflected form of a noun, of an adjective oradverb, or of a verb is an inflectional cross-reference. In-flectional cross-references appear only when the inflectedform falls at least a column away from the entry cross�referred to:

calves pl of ���

3wound . . . past and past part of ���

When guidance seems needed as to which one of severalhomographs or which sense of a multisense word is beingreferred to, a superscript numeral may precede the cross�reference or a sense number may follow it or both:

1toss . . . vt . . . 3 . . . c : ��� � 5a

Synonyms

Brief paragraphs discriminating words of closely associat-ed meaning from one another have been placed at a num-ber of entries. They are signaled by an indented boldfaceitalic syn. Each paragraph begins with a list of the words tobe discussed in it, followed by a concise statement of theelement of meaning that the words have in common. Thediscriminations themselves are amplified with verbal illus-trations:

cautious . . . adj . . .syn ������, �� ����� �, ����, ���� mean prudently watch-ful and discreet in the face of danger or risk. ������ implies the ex-ercise of forethought usu. prompted by fear of danger �a cautiousdriver. �� ����� � suggests less fear and stresses the surveying ofall possible consequences before acting or deciding �circumspect in hisbusiness dealings. ���� emphasizes suspiciousness and alertness inwatching for danger and cunning in escaping it �keeps a wary eye onthe competition. ���� implies a cautious reluctance to give, act, orspeak freely �chary of signing papers without having read them first.

When a word is included in a synonym paragraph, themain entry for that word is followed by a run-on synsee . . . , which refers to the entry where the synonym para-graph appears:

cirecumespect . . . adj . . . syn see ������

Explanatory Notes 23a

When a word is a main entry at which there is a synonymparagraph and is also included in another paragraph else-where, the paragraph at the main entry is followed by arun-on syn see in addition . . . , which refers to the entrywhere the other paragraph may be found:

1nateueral . . . adj . . .syn �������, �������, ����, ��� ���������, ������mean free from pretension or calculation . . . syn see in addition ��-����

1regeuelar . . . adj . . .syn ������, �����, �� ����, �������mean being of the sort orkind that is expected as usual, ordinary, or average . . .

Combining Forms, Prefixes� Suffixes

An entry that begins or ends with a hyphen is a word ele-ment that forms part of an English compound:

mega- or meg- comb form . . . 1 . . . b . . . �megahit�

-logy n comb form . . . 1 . . . �phraseology�

-lyze vb comb form . . . �electrolyze�

-like adj comb form . . . �bell-like� �ladylike�

pre- prefix . . . 1 a �1� . . . �prehistoric�

1-ory n suffix . . . 1 . . . �observatory�

1-ic adj suffix . . . 2 a . . . �aldermanic�

2-ly adv suffix . . . 1 a . . . �slowly�

-ize vb suffix . . . 2 a . . . �crystallize�

Combining forms, prefixes, and suffixes are entered inthis dictionary for three reasons: to make easier the writ-ing of etymologies of words in which these word elementsoccur over and over again� to make understandable themeaning of many undefined run-ons which for reasons ofspace would be omitted if they had to be given etymolo-gies and definitions� and to make recognizable the mean-ingful elements of new words that are not well enough es-tablished in the language to warrant dictionary entry.

Lists of Undefined Words

Lists of undefined words occur after the entries of theseprefixes and combining forms:

anti- multi- re-co- non- self-counter- out- sub-hyper- over- super-inter- post- ultra-mis- pre- un-

These words are not defined because they are self�explanatory� their meanings are simply the sum of a mean-ing of the prefix or combining form and a meaning of theroot word. Centered dots are shown to save the dictionaryuser the trouble of consulting another entry. The lists arenot exhaustive of all the words that might be, or actuallyhave been, formed with these prefixes and combiningforms. The dictionary has room for only the most com-mon or important examples.

24a Explanatory Notes

The English Languagein the Dictionary

In the offices where Merriam-Webster�s Collegiate Dic-tionary, Eleventh Edition, was edited, several thousandletters and e-mails are received each year. The topics theyarticulate are enormously varied. Some merely ask for aparticular bit of information about the English languagethat has been sought but not found in the dictionary. Afew others are in hot pursuit of a special interest. Still oth-ers, their writers having come to think of the dictionary asan all-purpose reference book, ask questions about manyother subjects besides words. A surprising number of cor-respondents, however, express considerable curiosityabout how their dictionary�that formidably long andclosely printed work with its many special abbreviations,symbols, and devices and its multitude of uses�came tobe just the book it is.

They may ask quite directly such questions as howwords make it into the dictionary or what it is that lexicog-raphers do when they are editing or reediting a dictionary.But even questions of a very different sort on the surfacemay unwittingly reveal much the same interest. �Why didyou fail to include word x in your book�� and �Why don�tyou still use the system of transcribing pronunciationswith which I grew up instead of the present one with its�upside-down e��� may be in part expressions of annoy-ance at what is seen �not always accurately as the dictio-nary�s failure to do its job, but they are just as truly de-mands to know how dictionary editors make the decisionto exclude some words from a given dictionary or to revisea long-standing feature of earlier editions. What follows isan effort to present a brief overview of the English lan-guage and its history and to provide brief and necessarilysomewhat general answers to a few of the questions thatusers of this dictionary probably have about it, the pro-cesses that went into its making, and its relation to thatfascinating and sometimes maddening marvel which wecall the English language.

Language is the object of study of the academic disci-pline known as linguistics. Although the roots of linguisticscience are found in earlier centuries, it is in most respectsa modern creation, and the understanding of language thatit offers us differs in a number of fundamental ways fromthe conceptions of language held by thinkers of the an-cient and medieval worlds, the Renaissance, or the En-lightenment. This understanding does not differ, however,in every way. The use of language is still seen by linguistsas a peculiarly human activity. We often use the word lan-guage to refer to the limited stock of movements or utter-ances by which some animals communicate a limitednumber of messages, but in doing so we recognize that weare speaking of something different in kind from our ownlanguage. Moreover, modern definitions of language arejust as likely as earlier definitions to emphasize its func-tional aspect: language enables human beings, at leastthose who share a particular language, to communicatewith each other by stating ideas, expressing feelings, andexchanging information.

Modern definitions of language, though, are more likelythan older ones to stress some other aspects. One is the ar-bitrary nature of the relationship between the convention-al sounds or other signs which serve as the vehicle of lan-guage and the meaning being conveyed by them. A fewnaive souls may believe that domestic swine are called pigsbecause their habits are so dirty, but it is clear to most thatno inherent or necessary connection exists between the se-

quence of sounds p plus i plus g and �any of variousstout-bodied short-legged omnivorous artiodactyl mam-mals �family Suidae with a thick bristly skin and a longmobile snout.� A similarly naive Frenchman or Germancould insist with neither more nor less reason that cochonor Schwein is the word that naturally expresses the essen-tial piggishness of the animal.

A linguistically oriented definition would also be likelyto emphasize the systematic nature of language. Were itnot for highly organized systems operating within any nat-ural language, it could hardly be the subtle and effectivetool of communication that it is. These systems are enor-mously complex both in themselves and in their mutualinteraction, so complex indeed that no language has yethad its workings fully described� yet, paradoxically, andfortunately for the human race, any child with a normalability to learn can, within a very few years, master at leastthe essentials of these systems for any one language withwhich it is in daily contact �or even two languages if thechild�s environment is bilingual. It is uncertain whetherthis is so because, as some linguists believe, at a profoundlevel of structure the details that make English so differentfrom other languages are unimportant and the systems ofall languages are largely the same, but the fact that welearn our native language almost effortlessly up to a cer-tain basic level of control is hardly to be denied.

The Systems of Language

The major systems that make up the broad comprehen-sive system of language itself are four in number: lexicon,grammar, semantics, and phonology. The one that dictio-nary editors and dictionary users are most directly con-cerned with is the vocabulary or lexicon, the collection ofwords and word elements which we put together in vari-ous ways to form larger units of discourse: phrases, claus-es, sentences, paragraphs, and so forth. All languages havea lexicon, and all lexicons are governed by rules that per-mit some kinds of word formation, make others dubious,and render still others clearly impossible. In English wemight say versatileness without hesitation if we neededsuch a word and could not for the moment think of versa-tility, even though the former is not normally part of oureveryday working vocabulary� but versatilize might give uspause, and nessversatile we would simply never utter. Thesize of the lexicon varies considerably from language tolanguage. The language of an isolated people, for example,may be perfectly adequate with a relatively small and fixedvocabulary, since it has no need of the coinages attendantupon modern technology, while English and other majorlanguages have enormous stocks of words, to which theyadd year by year at a great rate. Since the dictionary isconcentrated upon the lexicon, our discussion of the othersystems of language, as it proceeds, will be largely con-cerned with how they are related to the lexicon and thusare important within the dictionary.

The grammatical system of language governs the way inwhich words are put together to form the larger units ofdiscourse mentioned earlier. Grammar, of course, varies agreat deal from language to language just as the lexicondoes: in English, word order is a dominant factor in deter-mining meaning, while the use of inflectional endings tomark the grammatical function of individual words withina sentence plays a clearly subordinate role, though impor-

tant in some ways �as in indicating the number of a noun,the case of a personal pronoun, or the tense of a verb�.Other languages show markedly different patterns, such asLatin with its elaborate set of paradigms for nouns, verbs,adjectives, and pronouns and its highly flexible word or-der. The semantic system of a language has to do withmeanings and thus with the relation between the conven-tionalized symbols that constitute language and the exter-nal reality about which we need to communicate throughlanguage. The phonological system of a language is whatallows a speaker of that language to transform a grammat-ical unit embodying a meaning into a flow of utteredsounds that can be heard and interpreted �accurately, if allgoes well� by another speaker of the language. This systemis always very tightly organized. The inventory of basicmeaningful units of sound within a language �called pho-nemes by linguists� is never very large compared with thenumber of words and word elements in the lexicon� mostspeakers of English get by with about 40. Phonemes areidentified by the fact that in some pairs of words they cre-ate a contrast that signals a difference in meaning: we con-sider the vowel sounds of trip and trap to be different pho-nemes because the difference in vowel sounds is the soledeterminant of their being distinct words. Their consonantsounds are identical. Similarly, the initial consonantsounds of pull and bull, tie and die, and come and gum arecontrasting phonemes. On the other hand, the sound at thebeginning of pit and at the end of tip are phonetically quitedifferent, but as they do not contrast meaningfully we donot perceive them as distinct phonemes. The combinationsof these phonemes permitted in a given language are se-verely restricted, as are the ways in which speech soundsoccur in conjunction with other significant elements of thephonological system such as stress �force or intensity� andintonation �the rise and fall in pitch of the voice as itmoves through an utterance�. In English, for example, it ispossible for the consonants �str� to occur in succession,but only at the beginning of a word �as in strict� or in themiddle �as in monstrous�, not at the end, and the sequence�pgr� cannot occur at either the beginning or the end of aword but may occur in the middle �as in upgrade�.

Variation and Change in Language

All of the systems of language are constantly in opera-tion, and in a given language at a given time they mayseem almost to be monolithic or at least to have sufficientidentity that it makes sense, for example, to talk of thegrammar of English. And, indeed, how could it be other-wise� Language would be a far more imperfect tool ofcommunication than it is if the speakers of a languagewere not functioning within a system sufficiently unifiedto permit almost constant mutual intelligibility. Yet theimpression of unity which we receive when we take abroad descriptive look at a single language at a particulartime �taking a synchronic point of view, as linguists say� ismore than a little misleading because it has failed to takeaccount of the enormous variation that exists within thelanguage.

Each of us speaks a distinctive form of English that isnot identical in every particular with the form spoken byanyone else� linguists call this individual variety of a lan-guage an idiolect. Those whose idiolects share certain fea-tures of vocabulary, grammar, and phonology that are dis-tinctively different from corresponding features shared byothers who live in a different geographical area or belongto a different social group or who differ in some other waythat affects their language are said to speak a dialect of thelanguage. Researchers have identified a number of differ-ent geographical dialect areas within the United States,rather clearly marked on the Eastern seaboard but pro-gressively less well defined as one moves west� yet, the dia-lects of American English do not differ overall very greatlyfrom one another� some dialects of Great Britain are morestrikingly divergent in phonology, for example, than areany two dialects within this country, and some dialects ofother languages approach the condition of mutual unintel-

ligibility that is often taken to divide separate dialectsfrom separate languages.

Nor is variation in language by any means confined tomatters of idiolect or dialect. Variation may also be relatedto the several functional varieties of a language that peo-ple take up and discard as their roles and relationshipschange from moment to moment throughout the day.Such variation can involve vocabulary, pronunciation, andeven grammar. A worker who queries one colleague con-cerning the whereabouts of another with �Seen John��from which both the auxiliary verb have and the subjectyou have been deleted may not put the question in thesame casual way to a superior.

If variation is one of the most prominent aspects of lan-guage as one considers it today, the inescapable fact thatemerges from considering language historically �taking adiachronic point of view, as linguists say� is change. No liv-ing language stands still, however much we might wish attimes that it would. Change over the short run is mostreadily noticed in the lexicon, as a comparison of succes-sive editions of any modern dictionary will show� in gram-mar and phonology the forces of change typically operatemuch more slowly. Still, the cumulative effect of changesthat are imperceptible as they occur can be impressivewhen measured across the centuries. The English of one�sgreat-great-grandfather might not sound so very differentfrom one�s own. Perhaps it might seem a bit stiff and for-mal, a bit old-fashioned in its vocabulary, but the differ-ences would not be dramatic. If we could somehow listento an English-speaker of King Alfred�s time, however, wewould hear what all but a few scholars of historical En-glish would take to be a foreign tongue.

The History of English

The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps tooneatly, divided into three periods usually called Old En-glish �or Anglo-Saxon�, Middle English, and Modern En-glish. The earliest period begins with the migration of cer-tain Germanic tribes from the Continent to Britain in thefifth century �.�., though no records of their language sur-vive from before the seventh century, and it continues un-til the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By thattime Latin, Old Norse �the language of the Viking invad-ers�, and especially the Anglo-French of the dominantclass after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun tohave a substantial impact on the lexicon, and the well-developed inflectional system that typifies the grammar ofOld English had begun to break down. The following briefsample of Old English prose illustrates several of the sig-nificant ways in which change has so transformed Englishthat we must look carefully to find points of resemblancebetween the language of the tenth century and our own. Itis taken from Aelfric�s �Homily on St. Gregory the Great�and concerns the famous story of how that pope came tosend missionaries to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Chris-tianity after seeing Anglo-Saxon boys for sale as slaves inRome:

Eft he axode, hu ðre ðeode nama wre þe hi ofcomon. Him ws geandwyrd, þt hi Angle genemnodewron. þa cwð he, �Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene,for ðan ðe hi engla wlite habbað, and swilcumgedafenað þt hi on heofonum engla geferan beon.�

A few of these words will be recognized as identical inspelling with their modern equivalentshe, of, him, for,and, onand the resemblance of a few others to familiarwords may be guessednama to name, comon to come,w�re to were, w�s to wasbut only those who have madea special study of Old English will be able to read the pas-sage with understanding. The sense of it is as follows:�Again he �St. Gregory� asked what might be the name ofthe people from which they came. It was answered to himthat they were named Angles. Then he said, Rightly arethey called Angles because they have the beauty of angels,and it is fitting that such as they should be angels� compan-ions in heaven.� � Some of the words in the original have

26a The English Language

survived in altered form, including axode �asked�, hu�how�, rihtlice �rightly�, engla �angels�, habba} �have�, swil-cum �such�, heofonum �heaven�, and beon �be�. Others,however, have vanished from our lexicon, mostly withoutleaving a trace, including several that were quite commonwords in Old English: eft �again,� }eode �people, nation,�cw�} �said, spoke,� gehatene �called, named,� wlite �ap-pearance, beauty,� and geferan �companions.� Recogni-tion of some words is naturally hindered by the presenceof two special characters, þ, called �thorn,� and ð, called�edh,� which served in Old English to represent the soundsnow spelled with th.

Other points worth noting include the fact that the pro-noun system did not yet, in the late tenth century, includethe third person plural forms beginning with th-: hi ap-pears where we would use they. Several aspects of word or-der will also strike the reader as oddly unlike ours. Subjectand verb are inverted after an adverb�þa cw�} he �Thensaid he��a phenomenon not unknown in Modern Englishbut now restricted to a few adverbs such as never and re-quiring the presence of an auxiliary verb like do or have.In subordinate clauses the main verb must be last, and soan object or a preposition may precede it in a way no long-er natural: þe hi of comon �which they from came,� for }an}e hi engla wlite habba} �because they angels� beautyhave.�

Perhaps the most distinctive difference between Old andModern English reflected in Aelfric�s sentences is the elab-orate system of inflections, of which we now have onlyremnants. Nouns, adjectives, and even the definite articleare inflected for gender, case, and number: }�re }eode��of� the people� is feminine, genitive, and singular, Angle�Angles� is masculine, accusative, and plural, and swilcum�such� is masculine, dative, and plural. The system of in-flections for verbs was also more elaborate than ours: forexample, habba} �have� ends with the -a} suffix charac-teristic of plural present indicative verbs. In addition,there were two imperative forms, four subjunctive forms�two for the present tense and two for the preterit, or past,tense�, and several others which we no longer have. Evenwhere Modern English retains a particular category of in-flection, the form has often changed. Old English presentparticiples ended in -ende not -ing, and past participlesbore a prefix ge- �as geandwyrd �answered� above�.

The period of Middle English extends roughly from thetwelfth century through the fifteenth. The influence ofFrench �and Latin, often by way of French� upon the lexi-con continued throughout this period, the loss of some in-flections and the reduction of others �often to a final un-stressed vowel spelled -e� accelerated, and many changestook place within the phonological and grammatical sys-tems of the language. A typical prose passage, especiallyone from the later part of the period, will not have such aforeign look to us as Aelfric�s prose has� but it will not bemistaken for contemporary writing either. The followingbrief passage is drawn from a work of the late fourteenthcentury called Mandeville�s Travels. It is fiction in the guiseof travel literature, and, though it purports to be from thepen of an English knight, it was originally written inFrench and later translated into Latin and English. In thisextract Mandeville describes the land of Bactria, apparent-ly not an altogether inviting place, as it is inhabited by�full yuele �evil folk and full cruell.�

In þat lond ben trees þat beren wolle, as þogh it were ofscheep� whereof men maken clothes, and all þing þatmay ben made of wolle. In þat contree ben many ipo-taynes, þat dwellen som tyme in the water, and somtymeon the lond: and þei ben half man and half hors, as Ihaue seyd before� and þei eten men, whan þei may takehem. And þere ben ryueres and watres þat ben fulle byt-tere, þree sithes more þan is the water of the see. In þatcontré ben many griffounes, more plentee þan in onyother contree. Sum men seyn þat þei han the body vp-ward as an egle, and benethe as a lyoun: and treuly þeiseyn soth þat þei ben of þat schapp. But o griffoun haththe body more gret, and is more strong, þanne eight ly-ouns, of suche lyouns as ben o this half� and more gret

and strongere þan an hundred egles, suche as we hanamonges vs. For o griffoun þere wil bere fleynge to hisnest a gret hors, Fif he may fynde him at the poynt, ortwo oxen Foked togidere, as þei gon at the plowgh.

The spelling is often peculiar by modern standards andeven inconsistent within these few sentences �contré andcontree, o �griffoun and a �gret hors, þanne and þan, forexample�. Moreover, there is in addition to thorn anotherold character F, �yogh,� to make difficulty. It can repre-sent several sounds but here may be thought of as equiva-lent to y. Even the older spellings �including those where ustands for v or vice versa� are recognizable, however, andthere are only a few words like ipotaynes �hippopotamus-es� and sithes �times� that have dropped out of the lan-guage altogether. We may notice a few words and phrasesthat have meanings no longer common such as byttere�salty,� o this half �on this side of the world,� and at thepoynt �to hand,� and the effect of the centuries-long dom-inance of French on the vocabulary is evident in many fa-miliar words which could not have occurred in Aelfric�swriting even if his subject had allowed them, words likecontree, ryueres, plentee, egle, and lyoun.

In general word order is now very close to that of ourtime, though we notice constructions like hath the bodymore gret and three sithes more þan is the water of the see.We also notice that present tense verbs still receive a pluralinflection as in beren, dwellen, han, and ben and that whilenominative þei has replaced Aelfric�s hi in the third personplural, the form for objects is still hem. All the same, thenumber of inflections for nouns, adjectives, and verbs hasbeen greatly reduced, and in most respects Mandeville iscloser to Modern than to Old English.

The period of Modern English extends from the six-teenth century to our own day. The early part of this peri-od saw the completion of a revolution in the phonology ofEnglish that had begun in late Middle English and that ef-fectively redistributed the occurrence of the vowel pho-nemes to something approximating their present pattern.�Mandeville�s English would have sounded even less famil-iar to us than it looks.� Other important early develop-ments include the stabilizing effect on spelling of the print-ing press and the beginning of the direct influence of Latinand, to a lesser extent, Greek on the lexicon. Later, as En-glish came into contact with other cultures around theworld and distinctive dialects of English developed in themany areas which Britain had colonized, numerous otherlanguages made small but interesting contributions to ourword-stock.

The historical aspect of English really encompassesmore than the three stages of development just under con-sideration. English has what might be called a prehistoryas well. As we have seen, our language did not simplyspring into existence� it was brought from the Continentby Germanic tribes who had no form of writing and henceleft no records. Philologists know that they must have spo-ken a dialect of a language that can be called West Ger-manic and that other dialects of this unknown languagemust have included the ancestors of such languages asGerman, Dutch, Low German, and Frisian. They knowthis because of certain systematic similarities which theselanguages share with each other but do not share with, say,Danish. However, they have had somehow to reconstructwhat that language was like in its lexicon, phonology,grammar, and semantics as best they can through sophisti-cated techniques of comparison developed chiefly duringthe nineteenth century. Similarly, because ancient andmodern languages like Old Norse and Gothic or Icelandicand Norwegian have points in common with Old Englishand Old High German or Dutch and English that they donot share with French or Russian, it is clear that there wasan earlier unrecorded language that can be called simplyGermanic and that must be reconstructed in the sameway. Still earlier, Germanic was just a dialect �the ances-tors of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were three other suchdialects� of a language conventionally designated Indo-European, and thus English is just one relatively youngmember of an ancient family of languages whose descen-

The English Language 27a

dants cover a fair portion of the globe. �For more detail onthe Indo-European languages and their relationships, seethe table having that title in the dictionary.�

The Dictionary and the Systemsof English

By far the largest part of this volume is called �A Dictio-nary of the English Language� and so is naturally con-cerned with the systems of English that we have cursorilysurveyed in their synchronic and diachronic aspects. Infact, information related to all four systems is given atmost entries in the dictionary, as well as information relat-ed to what could reasonably be considered a fifth systemof English and many other �though not all� languages�writing. The writing system provides an alternative tospeech that permits long-distance transmission and visualreception of a communication and also enables a record tobe kept for much longer than human memory can keep it.The writing system of Modern English allows for consider-able variation, as is shown by the persistence of variantspellings like veranda and verandah or judgment and judge-ment and by the fact that many compound words haveopen, hyphenated, and solid stylings all in common useconcurrently �as decision maker, decision-maker, and deci-sionmaker�. At the same time, however, it tends to be aforce for standardization and unification because record-ed language creates a precedent for future language useand provides a basis on which language use can be taughtto the younger members of a community. This conserva-tive effect is one reason why spelling reformers have so farmet with only modest success in their efforts.

We may now begin to look at the ways in which the spe-cific systems of our language are treated in the dictionaryand at the processes of lexicography which produce the in-formation about these systems that the dictionary user en-counters. A dictionary is necessarily and obviously con-cerned with the lexicon above all, and the information itcan convey about the language systems is confined to thelevel of the word or short phrase. The result is that no dic-tionary of English, however good it may be, can provideall of the information about the English language that onemight wish to have at one time or another. Thus, for exam-ple, details about such important aspects of phonology asthe patterns of sentence stress and sentence intonationcannot be accommodated in a work of reference orga-nized in terms of words, nor can grammatical topics suchas word order in subordinate clauses or the structural rela-tion of interrogative to declarative sentences.

The History of English in the Dictionary

A similar limitation applies to the treatment of the his-torical aspect of English� yet, Merriam-Webster�s Colle-giate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, is able to offer a gooddeal of historical information about words. What we earli-er called the prehistory of English is encountered in the et-ymologies that appear in square brackets ahead of the def-initional material at many entries. An etymology tells uswhat is known of an English word before it became theword we enter in the dictionary� that is, if the word wascreated in English the etymology shows, to whatever ex-tent is not already obvious from the shape of the word,what materials were used to form it, and if the word wasborrowed into English the etymology traces the steps ofthe borrowing process backward from the point at whichthe word entered English to the earliest recorded ancestrallanguage. Where it is most relevant, note is made of one orseveral words from other languages that are related��akin�� to the entry word but are not in the direct line ofborrowing. Thus, a word like Aelfric�s heofon �ignoring forthe moment the dative plural inflection -um that it bears inthe passage we looked at earlier� appears as part of thisdictionary�s etymology for the modern word heaven: �MEheven, fr. OE heofon� akin to OHG himil heaven. Sinceheaven is a native English word, it has only two recorded

ancestors, Middle English heven and Old English heofon.Beyond those forms lie only the hypothetical, reconstruct-ed forms of West Germanic, Germanic, and Indo-European. In this case one related West Germanic word isshown, Old High German himil, which is the parent ofModern German Himmel but only a second cousin of ourEnglish word. Similarly Mandeville�s contree appears asthe first element in the etymology of its modern descen-dant country: �ME contree, fr. AF cuntree, contré, fr. MLcontrata, fr. L contra against, on the opposite side. Herewe see that our word can be traced back through threenouns of Middle English, Anglo-French, and MedievalLatin �all of which had the same basic meaning as theModern English noun and so are not glossed� to a Latinpreposition �which has a different meaning and so isglossed�. The two etymological patterns are, as we wouldexpect from what we know of the history of the Englishvocabulary, among the most common and are repeatedwith differing details at entry after entry throughout thebook. Of course, borrowings that have occurred withinthe Modern English period are more various, and we findsuch exotic language names as Nahuatl �at chocolate�,Taino �at 2barbecue�, Tagalog �at boondocks�, Malay �at1amok�, and Kimbundu �at banjo� as well as the more fa-miliar Russian �at troika�, Italian �at 1ballot�, Arabic �atmullah�, Spanish �at 1macho�, and Japanese �at tycoon�.

An etymologist must know a good deal about the historyof English and also about the relationships of sound andmeaning and their changes over time that underlie the re-construction of the Indo-European family, but even thatconsiderable learning is not enough to do all that must bedone to provide etymologies of English words in a dictio-nary such as this. A knowledge is also needed of the vari-ous processes by which words are created within ModernEnglish: among the most important processes are shorten-ing, or clipping �see 1prom�, functional shift �as the nouncommute from the verb commute�, back-formation �seegrid�, combination of initial letters �see radar�, transfer ofpersonal or place names �see silhouette and denim�, imita-tion of sounds �see 1whiz�, folk etymology �see Jerusalemartichoke�, and blending of two words �see motel�. Alsoavailable to one who feels the need for a new word toname a new thing or express a new idea is the very consid-erable store of prefixes, suffixes, and combining formsthat already exist in English. Some of these are native andothers are borrowed from French, but the largest numberhave been taken directly from Latin or Greek, and theyhave been combined in many different ways often withoutany special regard for matching two elements from thesame original language. The combination of these word el-ements has produced many scientific and technical termsof Modern English. Once in a while a word is created spon-taneously out of the creative play of sheer imagination.�For examples of the latter sort of creation see the etymol-ogies of boondoggle and googol in the dictionary. Such in-vention is common, as Merriam-Webster editors knowfrom their mail, which frequently includes requests fromcoiners that their brand-new words be entered in the dic-tionary. Very few coinages of this kind ever come intocommon enough use to justify dictionary entry, however.�

An etymologist working on a new edition of the Colle-giate Dictionary must review the etymologies at existingmain entries and prepare such etymologies as are requiredfor the main entries being added to the new edition. In thecourse of the former activity adjustments must sometimesbe made either to incorporate a useful piece of informa-tion that has previously been overlooked or to revise theaccount of the word�s origin in the light of new evidence.Such evidence may be unearthed by the etymologist ormay be the product of published research by scholars ofhistorical linguistics and others. In writing new etymolo-gies this editor must, of course, be alive to the possible lan-guages from which a new term may have been borrowedand to the possible ways in which one may have been cre-ated. New scientific and technical terms sometimes posespecial difficulties. While they are most often formed fromfamiliar word elements, occasionally a case like methotrex-

28a The English Language

ate presents itself in which one part �here -trexate� resistsidentification.

When all attempts to provide a satisfactory etymologyhave failed, the editor has recourse to the formula �originunknown.� This formula seldom means that the editor isunaware of various speculations about the origin of theterm but instead usually means that no single theory con-ceived by the etymologist or proposed by others is wellenough backed by evidence to include in a serious work ofreference, even when qualified by �probably� or �per-haps.� Thus, our editors frequently have to explain to cor-respondents that the dictionary fails to state that the originof posh is in the initial letters of the phrase �port out, star-board home��supposedly a shipping term for the cooleraccommodations on steamships plying between Britainand India from the mid-nineteenth century on�not be-cause the story is unknown to us but because no evidenceto support it has yet been produced. Some evidence existsthat casts strong doubt on it� the word is not known earlierthan 1918 �in a source unrelated to shipping�, and the ac-ronymic explanation does not appear until 1935. It there-fore seems reasonable to consider the acronymic explana-tion a modern invention and assign posh the etymology�origin unknown�. The etymologist must sift such theories,often several conflicting theories of greater or lesser likeli-hood, and try to evaluate the evidence conservatively butfairly in arriving at the soundest possible etymology thatthe available information permits. Occasionally time willprove the result to be somewhat �or even quite� mistaken,and the etymology will need to be replaced by somethingbetter. This can happen even when the etymologist feltquite certain of the original etymology, and it is just onereason why dictionaries must be reedited from time totime if they are to remain reliable.

Historical information about words is also provided bythe date appearing in parentheses just before the first oronly definition at most main entries. The date given is forthe earliest recorded use known to our editors of the firstentered sense of that entry. In most cases the date is also,in effect, for the earliest use of the word itself that weknow of. Some words, however, had early senses that laterpassed from common use without gaining special literaryimportance, and these senses are omitted from this dictio-nary. Because it would be misleading to give a date for asense that the dictionary does not show, the date is alwaysfor the first sense actually defined at the entry. Becausethe senses of any word having more than one are alwayspresented in historical order, with the one known to havebeen used first given first, the date serves as a link betweenthe prehistory of the word shown in the etymology and itslater recorded history of semantic development within thelanguage as reflected in the order of definitions.

Evidence for the dates has come from a number ofsources. Especially for words that have been a part of thelanguage since before the twentieth century, the most im-portant sources have been the major historical dictionariesof English. These works include for each sense dated ex-amples of use from one or several authors including theearliest one available to the editors. Chief among these dic-tionaries is the majestic twenty-volume Oxford EnglishDictionary, Second Edition, now also available as OEDOnline in a form that permits electronic searches of thefull text and that includes draft entries toward a Third Edi-tion. Also of great importance have been the Middle En-glish Dictionary, A Dictionary of American English, ADictionary of Americanisms, The Scottish National Dic-tionary, and A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue.Other dictionaries and studies that include dated quota-tions and have proved helpful in particular cases includeHobson-Jobson �a glossary of Anglo-Indian terms�, TheStanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases,Baileys Early Modern English, Schfers Early ModernEnglish Lexicography, Wrights English Dialect Dictio-nary, Cassidy and Le Pages Dictionary of Jamaican En-glish, Branfords Dictionary of South African English,Aviss Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Princi-ples, Cassidy and Halls Dictionary of American RegionalEnglish, Wentworths American Dialect Dictionary, Light-

er�s Random House Historical Dictionary of AmericanSlang, and the several editions of The Barnhart Dictionaryof New English. The Century Dictionary and Cyclopediaand the successive editions of Merriam-Websters un-abridged dictionaries and their supplements of new wordshave also provided much assistance, for while these dictio-naries do not incorporate dated quotations, an entry inone or another of them is sometimes earlier than any ex-ample of the word from running text that we have beenable to find.

In recent years large, searchable text databases havecome into use. Their primary purposes generally havenothing to do with the earliest occurrence of particularwords. Nonetheless, several of them have been of great as-sistance to the editors of this work in the dating of entries.Earlier we mentioned OED Online, which frequently per-mits the finding of an earlier use lying so far undiscoveredamong the quotations at some entry other than the one forthe word being dated. In addition, we have made impor-tant use of NEXIS, an immense collection of journalisticmaterials from 1975 forward� Literature Online, contain-ing hundreds of thousands of poems, plays, and proseworks in English� Accessible Archives, which featureseighteenth- and nineteenth-century American periodicals�and Making of America, covering nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century general-interest and technical periodi-cals and books.

The other major source of dates, especially for the peri-od from 1890 to the present, is the Merriam-Webster file ofexamples of words used in context, which are called cita-tions. More will be said of this collection later. Here itneed only be noted that among the more than 15,700,000slips which the file contains frequently appear one or moreexamples of a given word that are earlier than any quotedin other sources. And, of course, our citations have beenessential to the dating of a considerable number of entriesnot included in any of the dictionaries mentioned above.The date of 1949 at classical conditioning is a case of thefirst sort, the earliest example in a reference source beingfrom 1964, while the date of 1928 at working papers is ofthe second sort. Some of the older books in our editorial li-brary and in other libraries to which our editors have ac-cess have occasionally supplemented the resources of thecitation file in supplying dates.

Almost from the appearance of the first volume of TheOxford English Dictionary, scholars have been discoveringearlier dates for particular words and senses by examiningworks not searched for examples by the dictionarys read-ers or by reading some works a second time and publish-ing the results of their findings in various journals. Manyhundreds of entries in this dictionary include a date de-rived from one of these articles, and while far too manyscholars and other interested students have participated inthis work for a listing here to be practical, some collectiveacknowledgment of our debt to them is necessary. Thedate of 1676 at menagerie may be cited as an example ofone derived from a source of this kind� the quotation dis-covered by this scholar is 36 years older than the earliestexample that had previously been found.

The style of the date is determined by the period of En-glish to which the sense being dated belongs: for entriesfrom Old English we indicate simply that the example isfrom the period before the twelfth century �bef. 12c�� forthose from Middle English we indicate their century, as�14c�� for those from Modern English we give a single year,as �1742�.

Some caution needs to be exercised in interpreting thesignificance of a date. It is never meant to indicate the ex-act point at which a word entered the language. For onething, words have often been in spoken use for many yearsbefore they come to be written down. For another, manytexts from the earlier periods in which they might havebeen written down have not survived. Then, too, not allsurviving texts, even for the earlier periods, have beenread to collect examples for any historical dictionary, andobviously for the modern era only a very small sample ofall published material has been examined in that way. Onecan perhaps with some justification think of the date as in-

The English Language 29a

dicating a time by which one can be sure that the wordwas in use, but it will be safest simply to remember thatthe date actually belongs to the earliest occurrence knownto the editors of this dictionary of the first entered sense ofthe word.

Leaving the historical aspect of English aside now, wemay consider how information about the systems of En-glish as they presently exist is recorded in this dictionary.The phonological system needs little more than a mentionhere. Its role in this dictionary is discussed in some detailin the �Guide to Pronunciation,� which immediately fol-lows this section, as is the way in which the pronunciationsshown in the dictionary have been determined.

Semantics in the Dictionary

In turning to consider the coverage of the semantic sys-tem in the dictionary, we face several difficult problems. Ifone function of a dictionary is more important than itsmany others, surely that function is to define the meaningof words. But while definition is central to the dictionaryand quite obviously is involved with semantics, for themost part it deals with individual words in isolation fromother words and thus ignores, to a considerable extent, thesystematic, relational side of English semantics. Anotherproblem is that although we know quite a lot about thesystem of English phonology and a good deal �though less�about the grammatical system, our understanding of thesemantic system is very imperfect, and much of what wedo know about it does not come very obviously into playin a dictionary. Still, we will have a glimpse of this systemwhen we consider the dictionary treatment of synonyms,and in the meantime there is much to be said about the de-fining of words. Perhaps the first thing that we need to re-mind ourselves of is that when we speak of the meaning ofa word we are employing an artificial, if highly useful, con-vention. Meaning does not truly reside within the wordbut in the minds of those who hear or read it. This factalone guarantees that meaning will be to a great degreeamorphous� no two people have had exactly the same ex-perience with what a word refers to and so the meaning ofthe word will be slightly or greatly different for each of us.It is obvious, then, that a dictionary which set itself thetask of defining the meanings of words in their entiretywould be a foolhardy enterprise. So dictionary editors in-voke the traditional distinction between denotation�thedirect and specific part of meaning which is sometimes in-dicated as the total of all the referents of a word and isshared by all or most people who use the word�andconnotation�the more personal associations and shadesof meaning that gather about a word as a result of individ-ual experience and which may not be widely shared. Thedictionary concerns itself essentially with the denotationsof words.

For the editors of this dictionary the defining processbegan long before they actually sat down to examine criti-cally the definitions of the last edition and to formulate tri-al definitions. It began with an activity that is called in ouroffices �reading and marking.� Ordinarily each editorspends a portion of the working day reading a variety ofnewspapers, magazines, and books, looking for anythingthat might be useful to a definer of English words. Becauseboth time and staff are limited and the scope of Englishseems nearly unlimited, changes in subject matter, geo-graphical area covered, and individual publications mustbe made from time to time in a way carefully calculated toensure the breadth and depth as well as the continuity ofour coverage of the vocabulary of English. An editor whois reading and marking will, of course, be looking for ex-amples of new words and for unusual applications of fa-miliar words that suggest the possible emergence of a newmeaning but will also be concerned to provide evidence ofthe current status of variant spellings, inflected forms, andthe stylings of compound words, to collect examples thatmay be quotable as illustrations of typical use in the dic-tionary, and to record many other useful kinds of informa-tion. In each instance the reader will underline the word or

phrase that is of interest and mark off as much context asis considered helpful in clarifying the meaning. This exam-ple of a word used in context is called a citation of theword. Ideally the editor would like all citations to illumi-nate the meaning of the word, but some passages will re-main obscure no matter how far they extend, and some-times one must mark a citation simply for the occurrenceof the word or meaning �especially when it is new�, trust-ing that the reading-and-marking process will yield morehelpful examples in the long run. In the case of ephemeralwords, of course, this may never happen, but truly ephem-eral words will not need to be defined for a dictionary. Atthis early stage of the dictionary-making process, editorsdo not make judgments about the likelihood of a word�sestablishing itself in the language. If a possible citation haseven the barest potential to be useful at a later time, it ismarked.

These samples of words in bracketed context are putonto 3 � 5 slips of paper, and the citation slips are placedin alphabetical order in rows of filing cabinets. �In recentyears new citations have also been preserved in machine-readable form.� The slips will be used, as needed, by theeditors in their roles as writers of definitions and certainother parts of dictionary entries. The editors engaged inthis eleventh edition of the Collegiate reviewed every oneof the more than a million citations that had been gatheredsince the tenth edition was prepared in the early 1990s.When necessary, they also drew upon the additional re-sources of what are called the �consolidated� files, thosethat contain all the citations �over fourteen million� thathad been accumulated in our offices since the late nine-teenth century and had been used in the editing of themany dictionaries this company published before thepresent one.

The actual defining process often begins with a numberof special assignments called �group defining projects,�which may range from a small set of words like those forthe days of the week or the letters of the English alphabet�for which parallel, formulaic definitions are required� tothe vocabulary of a large subject area such as music or an-thropology. When these assignments have been completed,defining proceeds alphabetically, with the editors respon-sible for the terminology of the life sciences or the physicalsciences and related technologies working independentlyof the editors responsible for defining the general vocabu-lary.

If you were a definer, you would typically be working ata given moment with a group of citations covering a rela-tively short segment of the alphabet, gri- to gro-, for exam-ple, and with the entries of the dictionary being reeditedthat fall within the same segment. Your job would be to de-termine, under the guidance of the citations, which exist-ing entries could remain in the new edition essentially un-changed because their usage showed no significantalteration, which entries needed to be revised either bymodification of existing definitions or by the addition ofnew ones, which old entries were expendable for the newedition, and what new entries should be added to keepcoverage of the lexicon up-to-date. You would begin byreading and sorting out the citation slips, first by gram-matical function, in the case of a word like groom that isboth noun and verb, and then by meaning within each partof speech. For each group of citations that was covered byan adequate existing definition, you would need only to in-dicate that you had examined them and would do nothingto the definition. For definitions needing adjustment, youwould indicate the change to be made. In many cases, youwould have some citations left over that were not coveredby an existing definition, and it would then be your job todetermine whether that segment of meaning was perhapsrelatively uncommon and not backed by a sufficient rangeand number of citations and so not needed for the dictio-nary or whether in fact it was a sense that dictionary usersare entitled to find suitably defined when they come look-ing for it. In the former case you would reject the cita-tions, and eventually they would find their way back to thefiles to await review for another dictionary �by which timeperhaps the citational backing would be stronger and a

30a The English Language

definition needed�. In the latter case the responsibility toframe the kind of definition that will adequately conveythat particular segment of meaning to the dictionary userwould be yours.

In writing that definition, you could follow any of anumber of paths marked out by the instructions given toeach definer. These include both the general policies andpractices that govern all Merriam-Webster dictionariesand the more specific directions and prohibitions con-tained in the �style file,� as it is called, for this particulardictionary.

The kind of definition that you would write in most cas-es is called an analytical definition. It consists in its purestform of the statement of a class to which the term beingdefined is assigned and a number of characteristics whichdifferentiate the individual from other members of theclass. For example, the first sense of grove is defined in thisCollegiate as �a small wood without underbrush,� assign-ing a grove to the more general class of woods and using�small� and �without underbrush� to indicate in whatways a grove is unlike other kinds of woods. Another pos-sibility would be for you to define a synonym, as is done atthe sixth sense of the noun grip, where the definition is����������.� Defining by synonym tends to be inexactbecause even true synonyms do not have exactly the samemeaning and is perhaps most useful in cases like the onejust mentioned where one kind of referent has two ormore names, a situation that occurs frequently with thecommon names of plants and animals. For this reason welink any synonym definition to an analytical definition bymaking the synonym a cross-reference �in small capitalletters� to another entry where an analytical definitionsuitable for both words is given: at stagehand is the defini-tion �a stage worker who handles scenery, properties, orlights,� which is also a good definition of the sixth sense ofgrip.

Within these basic defining patterns many variations arepermitted. Some analytical definitions may justifiably betruncated by the use of a related word within the defini-tion in order to save precious space for more entries. Forexample, gross domestic product can be defined as �thegross national product excluding the value of net incomeearned abroad� because the meaning of gross nationalproduct is given as �the total value of the goods and servic-es produced by the residents of a nation during a specifiedperiod �as a year�,� and so the definition of gross domesticproduct need not give that information a second time.

It is also possible to add a synonymous cross-referenceto an analytical definition and thereby incorporate at littlecost of space a second version of the meaning that looks atit from a slightly different aspect. It is possible to add aparenthetical element that specifies one or several of thetypical referents of the word or that indicates the sole or atypical object of a transitive verb. One may begin an adjec-tive definition with one of a wide variety of formulas butothers are forbidden. It is clear already that definers� in-structions are elaborately detailed, and it would be tediousto rehearse them here. Their purpose is to assist in devel-oping the definer�s native talent so that the definitions thathe or she writes are consistently good ones. What is a gooddefinition� Many qualities could be mentioned, and prob-ably different definers would rank the relative importanceof those on any list differently� but all definers want theirdefinitions to be objective in reflecting what the wordmeans as it is actually used rather than what the definer orsomeone else thinks it ought to mean, and they want theirdefinitions to be accurate, clear, informative, and concise.In short, they want their definitions to have the qualitiesthat users have in mind when they call a dictionary theyadmire �authoritative.�

In the course of your defining, you would have an op-portunity fairly often to make another kind of decision:whether to include or omit a new candidate for main en-try. Let us take as an example the word bioterrorism,which is one of many entries new to this edition of the Col-legiate Dictionary. If you had been the definer who han-dled that word, you would have been faced with a group ofabout three dozen citations to read covering a span of

twelve years, with the greatest concentration in the yearsfrom 1996 to the present. They would include extractsfrom such publications as The Nation, Business Week, USAToday, Newsweek, The Ottawa Citizen, The Atlantic Month-ly, The New York Times, The New Republic, The Journal ofthe American Medical Association, Commonweal, and Pub-lishers Weekly. In reading the citations, you would noticethat while they varied in many details of context, theyseem to be describing a straightforward and simple �not tosay chilling� concept represented by the two elements thatmake up the word: bio- and terrorism. You might then haveproduced the following definition or one like it: �terrorisminvolving the use of biological weapons.� �Terrorism is, ofcourse, entered and defined at its own alphabetical placein the dictionary.�

The number and time span of the citations and the vari-ety of the sources would already have told you that thiswas a very strong, and perhaps even an essential, candidatefor entry in the new edition. There is no magic number ofcitations that guarantees entry and no particular span ofyears that must be reached. To a great extent the judgmentmade here must rest on your insight and experience as adefiner who has seen the citational backing for manywords, who has most likely defined words for otherMerriam-Webster dictionaries in the past, and who thushas some sense of the relative importance and degree ofestablishment of new entries within the lexicon and oftheir likely staying power.

You would have noticed that in addition to the evidencefor the noun bioterrorism, there were also fourteen cita-tions for a word bioterrorist, some showing it used as anoun in the usual ways but several others showing it mod-ifying another noun �as in �a bioterrorist plot��. Seeingboth that these uses were less important than bioterrorism�though also well backed by citations� and that theirmeanings were easily inferred from the meaning of themain entry word, you would add them to your new mainentry as an undefined run-on with a double functional la-bel �adj or n�. You would also notice ten citations for anoun bioterror with exactly the same meaning as bioterror-ism. Our rules do not allow this word to be run on since itsmeaning is not easily inferred from the meaning of themain entry, but you might well make a separate main en-try for it, defining it by synonymous cross-reference tobioterrorism.

To take one further example of a somewhat differentkind, if you had been the life-sciences definer responsiblefor handling the term genomics, you would have read over40 citations. Many of these would have been from sourcessuch as Science, Nature, and BioWorld Today, likely to beseen chiefly by people with specialized interests� but youwould also have seen examples from The Wall Street Jour-nal, Time, Wired, and The New Yorker. In other words, theterm is likely to be encountered by people with general in-terests and, given its nature, will probably be looked up ina dictionary fairly often. Such considerations would haveled you to propose entry for the term and with a muchhigher priority than if the citational backing had beennearly all technical.

It is worth noting briefly that in the course of your workas a definer you would have been concerned with what thecitations reveal about a word in addition to its meaning.The definer is initially responsible for most of the frame-work of the entry including not only spelling variants andrun-ons but also inflected forms, usage notes, verbal illus-trations, and temporal, regional, stylistic, and subject la-bels.

The other important part of these entries that is con-cerned with English semantics is the synonym paragraph.These paragraphs are not written by each individual defin-er as particular entries are encountered but are rather thespecial assignment of usually one editor, who decideswhich words will be included in a single paragraph and atwhich entry the paragraph will be placed. The synonymeditor has a number of responsibilities in addition to theactual writing or revising of the synonym paragraph. Eachentry for a term discussed in a paragraph must be checkedto ensure that the definition of a given sense is fully conso-

The English Language 31a

nant with its treatment in the paragraph, and the editorhas the authority to make small adjustments of definitionsso that no discrepancies which might puzzle a user remain.

Like the definer, this editor must read citations verycarefully to see that the opening statement of the coremeaning shared by the synonyms includes neither toomuch nor too little, that each discrimination of one wordfrom the others is accurate, and that typical examples arechosen as a basis on which to frame verbal illustrations. Itis particularly in these paragraphs that the dictionary usercomes into contact with the systematic side of English se-mantics because here the concern is with the relationshipof meanings instead of the meanings themselves as discreteentities. For example, the synonym paragraph at splendidin this dictionary states that splendid, resplendent, gor-geous, glorious, sublime, and superb mean �extraordinarilyor transcendently impressive.� This statement of meaningis at once too broad and too narrow to be a good definitionfor any of the words� it trims away the particular elementsof meaning that make each word distinctive �the most im-portant of which are stated in the following discussion�. Itdoes, however, give us an accurate notion of the point atwhich these words come into a precise semantic relation-ship with each other.

Grammar and Usage in the Dictionary

The last of the four systems of English whose reflectionwe may see, at least briefly and occasionally, in the dictio-nary is the grammatical system. As we saw earlier, this sys-tem involves chiefly the relationship between words asthey form more complex units rather than individualwords themselves. A descriptive grammar of English is avery different kind of book from a dictionary. Neverthe-less, virtually every entry in this dictionary contains atleast one piece of information about its grammatical na-ture and the kinds of relationships it can enter into, name-ly, the functional label which typically indicates the partof speech of the entry or, in the case of terminal word ele-ments, the part of speech of the words that they form. If anentry is labeled adv, we know that it can describe the ac-tion of a verb but cannot itself be the main verb of a sen-tence, while an entry labeled n cannot link the subject of asentence with a predicate adjective but can be the subject.Other parts of the entry also give us information that isgrammatical in nature. One sort of information is offeredby the boldface inflected forms that are shown at every en-try for which they are irregular exceptions to the ordinarypatterns of English inflection or may present some othersort of problem to the dictionary user. Another is offeredby the undefined run-on entries. They illustrate the com-plex patterns by which one word or a number of wordscan be derived from a single base by means of affixation orfunctional shift. Certain kinds of usage notes following orstanding in place of definitions also present grammaticalinformation. Typical of the former kind of usage note isthe one given at sense 2 of 1joke, �often used in negativeconstructions,� and the one given at sense 2b of the verb4conk, �usu. used with off or out.� Typical of the latter arethe several usage notes at the entry for the preposition for,�used as a function word to indicate duration of time orextent of space� at sense 9, for example, and the note givenat sense 3c of boy, �used interjectionally to express intensi-ty of feeling.�

Usage is a concept that embraces many aspects of andattitudes toward language. Grammar is certainly only a

small part of what goes to make up usage, though somepeople use one term for the other, as when they label whatis really a controversial point of usage a grammatical er-ror. Usage guidance is offered in this dictionary in manyways� it would be little exaggeration to say that any infor-mation a user seeks and finds in this book can offer someguidance as to usage. But usage information is chiefly con-veyed through three devices: usage notes� temporal, re-gional, and stylistic labels� and usage paragraphs. The firsttwo are developed by definers from their examination ofcitations, including sometimes �and particularly in thecase of the labels� citations found in historical, dialect, andslang dictionaries as well as those in Merriam-Webster�s ci-tation file. The usage paragraphs like the synonym para-graphs are the result of a special project chiefly in thehands of one editor with assistance from several others.The editors attempted to select particular problems ofconfused or disputed usage that would be of broad generalinterest and could be treated at individual entries in thedictionary. The great majority of them involve words thathave traditionally been points of dispute �a few of theseare now probably more traditional than truly the subjectsof heated dispute�, but some are relatively new items forthis kind of consideration. Several paragraphs deal withpronunciation, a subject rarely treated in books about us-age.

The editors who wrote the paragraphs used severalkinds of material: books describing one or another aspectof the history of usage as a problem in English� books andarticles ruling on particular points of usage, whether theproduct of one person or a group� historical and other dic-tionaries� and above all citations of usage itself from ourfile. In digesting this mass of information and presenting itin a very brief compass, the editors have typically com-bined information on the history of the controversy, thecurrent state of expressed opinion, illustrations of both oldand modern use �often quoted�, and practical advice.These paragraphs have profited greatly from the extensiveresearch in the same materials that was carried out in thecourse of work on Merriam-Webster�s Dictionary of En-glish Usage.

It has been close to 250 years since Dr. Johnson pub-lished his great dictionary and 175 years since Noah Web-ster�s American Dictionary of the English Language ap-peared. Even the more modest Collegiate series has passedits hundredth birthday. It seems clear that the long tradi-tion of English dictionaries is not likely to wither and die.Indeed, dictionaries are likely to become, if anything, evenmore important to the general public in the future, at leastas long as the vocabulary of English continues the rapidgrowth which began early in the twentieth century andwhich seems now to intensify year by year. As long as theyare edited with a proper regard for the right of the dictio-nary user to have accurate information about what En-glish words actually mean and how they are actually used,those dictionaries will continue to serve a useful purposeand to be needed. Though they are incomplete as descrip-tions of the systems of English and are edited by falliblehumans whose best intentions sometimes fall short of themark, such dictionaries will continue to form, as the bestdictionaries have always done, a helpful bridge betweenwhat we know about language and how we use it. Move-ment across such a bridge is, of course, in both directions:our use of language furnishes the basis for our knowledgeof it, but our knowledge of it also helps us to use it moreeffectively.

32a The English Language

Guide to PronunciationPronunciation is not an intrinsic component of the dic-

tionary. For some languages, such as Spanish, Swahili, andFinnish, the correspondence between orthography andpronunciation is so close that a dictionary need only spella word correctly to indicate its pronunciation. ModernEnglish, however, displays no such consistency in soundand spelling, and so a dictionary of English must devoteconsiderable attention to the pronunciation of the lan-guage. The English lexicon contains numerous eye rhymessuch as love, move, and rove, words which do not soundalike despite their similar spellings. On the other hand, italso contains rhyming words such as breeze, cheese, ease,frieze, and sleaze whose rhymes are all spelled differently.

This grand mismatch between words that look alike andwords that sound alike does at least serve to record some-thing of the history of the English-speaking peoples andtheir language. Spelling often indicates whether a wordcomes down from the native Anglo-Saxon word stock orwas adopted in successive ages from the speech of a mis-sionary monk chanting Latin, a seafaring Viking dickeringin Old Norse, a Norman nobleman giving orders inFrench, or a young immigrant to turn-of-the-centuryAmerica. For example, the sound �sh� is spelled as sh innative English shore, as ch in the French loan champagne,as sk in one pronunciation of the Norwegian loan ski, as siin the Renaissance Latin loan emulsion, and as sch in therecent Yiddish loan schlep. English vowels present differ-ent complexities of sound and spelling, due in large part tothe fact that William Caxton introduced printing to En-gland in A.D. 1476, many decades before the sound changeknown as the Great Vowel Shift had run its course. Withthe rise of printing came an increasingly fixed set of spell-ing conventions, but the conventionalized spellings soonlost their connection to pronunciation as the vowel shiftcontinued. The stressed vowels of sane and sanity aretherefore identical in spelling though now quite differentin quality. For the trained observer the vagaries of Englishorthography contain a wealth of linguistic history� formost others, however, this disparity between sound andspelling is just a continual nuisance at school or work.

Readers often turn to the dictionary wanting to learnthe exact pronunciation of a word, only to discover thatthe word may have several pronunciations, as is the casefor deity, economic, envelope, and greasy, among many oth-ers. The inclusion of variant pronunciations disappointsthose who want their dictionary to list one �correct� pro-nunciation. In truth, though, there can be no objectivestandard for correct pronunciation other than the usage ofthoughtful and, in particular, educated speakers of En-glish. Among such speakers one hears much variation inpronunciation.

Dictionaries of English before the modern era usuallyignored pronunciation variants, instead indicating a singlepronunciation by marking the entry word with diacriticsto indicate stress and letter values. These systems werecumbersome, however, and reflected the dialectal biasesof the editors more than the facts about how a word wasactually spoken. Lexicographers came eventually to recog-nize the need for separate respellings which could recordthe entire range of accepted variants along with appropri-ate notes about dialectal distribution or usage.

This dictionary records many types of variation in pro-nunciation. Distinctions between British and Americanspeech are frequently noted, as are differences among thethree major dialect areas of the U.S.�Northern, South-ern, and Midland. Words that have distinctive pronuncia-

tions in Canada, such as decal and khaki, have those pro-nunciations duly noted. Pronunciations peculiar to certainspheres of activity are also represented, as for example thevariants of athwart and tackle heard in nautical use. Final-ly, a wide range of unpredictable variations are included,such as the pronunciation of economic with either �e� or���. Unpredictable variations frequently cut across theboundaries of geographical dialects, sometimes runningalong the lines of social class, ethnicity, or gender instead.In fine, this dictionary attempts to include�either explic-itly or by implication�all pronunciation variants of aword that are used by educated speakers of the Englishlanguage.

The pronunciations in this dictionary are informedchiefly by the Merriam-Webster pronunciation file. Thisfile contains citations that are transcriptions of words usedby native speakers of English in the course of utterancesheard in speeches, interviews, and conversations. In thisextensive collection of 3 � 5 slips of paper, one finds thepronunciations of a host of people: politicians, professors,curators, artists, musicians, doctors, engineers, preachers,activists, journalists, and many others. The MerriamWebster pronunciation editors have been collecting thesecitations from live speech and from radio, television, andshortwave broadcasts since the 1930s. It is primarily on thebasis of this large and growing file that questions of usageand acceptability in pronunciation are answered. All ofthe pronunciations recorded in this book can be docu-mented as falling within the range of generally acceptablevariation, unless they are accompanied by a restricting us-age note or symbol or a regional label.

No system of indicating pronunciation is selfexplanatory. The following discussion sets out the signifi-cation and use of the pronunciation symbols in this book,with special attention to those areas where experience hasshown that dictionary users may have questions. More de-tailed information can be found in the Guide to Pronunci-ation in Websters Third New International Dictionary.The order of symbols discussed below is the same as theorder on the page of Pronunciation Symbols, with the ex-ception that the symbols which are not letter charactersare here listed first. Those characters which have corre-sponding symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet�IPA� are shown with their IPA equivalents.

� � All pronunciation information is printed betweenreversed virgules. Pronunciation symbols are

printed in roman type and all other information, such aslabels and notes, is printed in italics.

� � � A high-set stress mark precedes a syllable withprimary �strongest� stress� a low-set mark pre-

cedes a syllable with secondary �medium� stress� a thirdlevel of weak stress requires no mark at all: � pen-mən-�ship�.

Since the nineteenth century the International Phonet-ics Association has recommended that stress marks pre-cede the stressed syllable, and linguists worldwide haveadopted this practice on the basic principle that before asyllable can be uttered the speaker must know what de-gree of stress to give it.

� - � Hyphens are used to separate syllables in pro-nunciation transcriptions. In actual speech, of

course, there is no pause between the syllables of a word.

The placement of hyphens is based on phonetic principles,such as vowel length, nasalization, variation due to the po-sition of a consonant in a syllable, and other nuances ofthe spoken word. The syllable breaks shown in this bookreflect the careful pronunciation of a single word out ofcontext. Syllabication tends to change in rapid or runningspeech: a consonant at the end of a syllable may shift intoa following syllable, and unstressed vowels may be elided.The numerous variations in pronunciation that a wordmay have in running speech are of interest to phoneticiansbut are well outside the scope of a dictionary of generalEnglish.

The centered dots in boldface entry words indicate po-tential end-of-line division points and not syllabication.These division points are determined by considerations ofboth morphology and pronunciation, among others. Fur-ther discussion of end-of-line division is contained in thesection of that name within the Explanatory Notes. In thisbook a consistent approach has been pursued, both to-ward word division based on traditional formulas and to-ward syllabication based on phonetic principles. As a re-sult, the hyphens indicating syllable breaks and thecentered dots indicating end-of-line division often do notfall in the same places.

� � � � Parentheses are used in pronunciations to indi-cate that whatever is symbolized between them

is present in some utterances but not in others� thus facto-ry ��fak-t�ə-�r�� is pronounced both ��fak-tə-r�� and ��fak-tr��, industry ��in-���dəs-tr�� is pronounced both ��in-dəs-tr�� and ��in-�dəs-tr��. In some phonetic environments, asin fence ��fen�t�s� and boil ��bi�-ə�l�, it may be difficult todetermine whether the sound shown in parentheses is or isnot present in a given utterance� even the usage of a singlespeaker may vary considerably.

� , � � Variant pronunciations are separated by com-mas� groups of variants are separated by semi-

colons. The order of variants does not mean that the firstis in any way preferable to or more acceptable than theothers. All of the variants in this book, except those re-stricted by a regional or usage label, are widely used in ac-ceptable educated speech. If evidence reveals that a partic-ular variant is used more frequently than another, theformer will be given first. This should not, however, preju-dice anyone against the second or subsequent variants. Inmany cases the numerical distribution of variants is equal,but one of them, of course, must be printed first.

��� The obelus, or division sign, is placed before apronunciation variant that occurs in educated

speech but that is considered by some to be questionableor unacceptable. This symbol is used sparingly and prima-rily for variants that have been objected to over a periodof time in print by commentators on usage, in schools byteachers, or in correspondence that has come to theMerriam-Webster editorial department. In most cases theobjection is based on orthographic or etymological argu-ments. For instance, the second variant of cupola ��ky-pə-lə, ÷-�l��, though used frequently in speech, is objectedto because a is very rarely pronounced ��� in English. Thepronunciation ��l�-�ber-�� is similarly marked at the entryfor library because some people insist that both r s shouldbe pronounced.

� ə � in unstressed syllables as in banana, collide, abut�IPA �ə��. This neutral vowel, called schwa, may

be represented orthographically by any of the letters a, e, i,o, u, y, and by many combinations of letters. In runningspeech unstressed vowels are regularly pronounced as �ə�in American and British speech.

Speakers of r-dropping dialects will often insert an �r�after �ə� when �ə� precedes another vowel. �See the sectionon �r�.�

��ə, �ə� in stressed syllables as in humdrum, abut.�IPA �$��.

Some speakers pronounce ��ə� and ��� identically before�l�, with the result that word pairs like gull and goal are ho-mophones. The sound produced in such cases is usuallythe same sound that other speakers use for ���.

� � � immediately preceding �l�, �n�, �m�, �ŋ�, as in bat-tle, cotton, and one pronunciation of open ���-

p�m� and of and ��ŋ� as in one pronunciation of the phraselock and key ��l�k-�ŋ-�k��. The symbol ��� preceding theseconsonants does not itself represent a sound. It signifies in-stead that the following consonant is syllabic� that is, theconsonant itself forms the nucleus of a syllable that doesnot contain a vowel.

In the pronunciation of some French or French-derivedwords ��� is placed immediately after �l�, �m�, �r� to indi-cate one nonsyllabic pronunciation of these consonants, asin the French words table �table,� prisme �prism,� and ti-tre �title,� each of which in isolation and in some contextsis a one-syllable word.

� ər � as in further, merger, bird �IPA �*, V��. �See thesection on �r�.� Actually, this is usually a single

sound, not a sequence of �ə� followed by �r�. Speakers ofr-dropping dialects will pronounce �ər� without r-color�IPA �5I, əI� when stressed, �ə� when unstressed� when itprecedes a consonant or pause, but will insert a following�r� when �ər� precedes another vowel.

� �ər-, �ə-r � as in two different pronunciationsof hurry. Most U.S. speakers pro-

nounce ��hər-�� with the �ər� representing the same soundsas in bird ��bərd�. Usually in metropolitan New York andsouthern England and frequently in New England and thesoutheastern U.S. the vowel is much the same as the vowelof hum followed by a syllable-initial variety of �r�. Thispronunciation of hurry is represented as ��hə-r�� in thisbook. Both types of pronunciation are shown for wordscomposed of a single meaningful unit �or morpheme� as incurrent, hurry, and worry. In words such as furry, stirring,and purring in which a vowel or vowel-initial suffix is add-ed to a word ending in r or rr �as fur, stir, and purr�, the sec-ond type of pronunciation outlined above is heard only oc-casionally and is not shown in this dictionary.

� a � as in mat, map, mad, gag, snap, patch �IPA ����.Some variation in this vowel is occasioned by the

consonant that follows it� thus, for some speakers map,mad, and gag have noticeably different vowel sounds.There is a very small number of words otherwise identicalin pronunciation that these speakers may distinguish sole-ly by variation of this vowel, as in the two words can �putinto cans� be able� in the sentence �Let s can what we can.�However, this distinction is sufficiently infrequent that thetraditional practice of using a single symbol is followed inthis book.

Many varieties of English do not allow �a� to be fol-lowed by an �r� which begins the following syllable. Insuch a case, the sequence of �a-r� is replaced by �er�, andword pairs like arrow and aero are homophones. This isnot always indicated in transcription. The reader shouldassume that any sequences of �a-r� will be �er� for suchspeakers.

When it precedes �ŋ�, �a� is often followed by a �y�sound. The resulting vowel sounds much like ��� for manyspeakers.

� a• � as in day, fade, date, aorta, drape, cape �IPA �e,e�, ei��. In most English speech this is actually a

diphthong. In lowland South Carolina, in coastal Georgiaand Florida, and occasionally elsewhere ��� is pronouncedas a monophthong. As a diphthong ��� has a first element�e� or monophthongal ��� and a second element �i�.

Before �l�, speakers may lose the second element �i� andinsert �ə�. Thus, a word like ale would be IPA �eəl�. Alter-

34a Guide to Pronunciation

nately, many speakers will keep the second element �i� andadd a following �ə� which creates a new syllable. Thus, theword trail will be ��tr�-əl�, rhyming with betrayal.

� � � as in bother, cot �IPA �"�. The symbol ��� repre-sents the vowel of cot, cod, and the stressed vow-

el of collar in the speech of those who pronounce this vow-el differently from the vowel in caught, cawed, and caller,represented by ��. In U.S. speech ��� is pronounced withlittle or no rounding of the lips, and it is fairly long in du-ration, especially before voiced consonants. In southernEngland ��� is usually accompanied by some lip roundingand is relatively short in duration. The vowel �� generallyhas appreciable lip rounding. Many U.S. speakers do notdistinguish between cot�caught, cod�cawed, andcollar�caller, usually because they lack or have less liprounding in the words transcribed with ��. Though thesymbols ��� and �� are used throughout this book to dis-tinguish the members of the above pairs and similarwords, the speakers who rhyme these pairs will automati-cally reproduce a sound that is consistent with their ownspeech.

In transcription of foreign words, the symbol ��� is alsoused to represent IPA �a�, a vowel which is generally pro-nounced farther forward in the mouth than ��� but not asfar forward as �a�. Some speakers may also have such avowel in words like balm which contrasts with the vowelin words like bomb. Such a contrast is rare, however, andit is not represented in this dictionary.

Speakers of r-dropping dialects will usually insert an �r�after ��� when ��� precedes another vowel. �See the sectionon �r�.

� �r � as in car, heart, aardvark, bazaar, bizarre �IPA�"V, aV, #V�. The initial element of this diph-

thong may vary from ��� to a vowel pronounced fartherforward in the mouth than ���, or it may be a vowel withsome lip rounding resembling ��. Speakers of r-droppingdialects will pronounce ��r� as a long vowel �IPA �"I, aI�when it precedes a consonant or pause, and may distin-guish ��r� in cart from ��� in cot by the length and qualityof the vowel, not by the presence of �r�. However, speakersof r-dropping dialects will usually insert an �r� after ��r�when it precedes a vowel. �See the section on �r�.

� au� � as in now, loud, out �IPA �aC, au�. The initialelement of this diphthong may vary from �a�

to ���, the first being more common in Southern and southMidland speech than elsewhere. In coastal areas of thesouthern U.S. and in parts of Canada this diphthong is of-ten realized as �ə�� when immediately preceding a voice-less consonant, as in the noun house and in out.

Many varieties of English do not allow �a�� to be fol-lowed by �l� in the same syllable. Speakers of such varie-ties will insert a following �ə� which creates a new syllable.This is indicated by the transcription �a��-əl�. For suchspeakers, owl will rhyme with avowal. Also, many varietiesof English do not allow �a�� to be followed by �r� in thesame syllable. Speakers of such varieties will transform thefollowing �r� into �ər�, thus creating a new syllable. This isindicated by the transcription �a��-ər�. For such speakers,scour will rhyme with plower.

� b � as in baby, rib �IPA �b�.

� ch� as in chin, nature ��n�-chər� �IPA �A�. Actual-ly, this sound is �t� + �sh�. The distinction be-

tween the phrases why choose and white shoes is main-tained by a difference in the syllabication of the �t� and the�sh� in each case and the consequent use of different vari-eties �or allophones of �t�.

� d � as in did, adder �IPA �d�. �See the section on �t�below for a discussion of the flap allophone of

�d�. Many speakers pronounce �d� like �j� when it occursbefore �r� in the same syllable.

� e � as in bet, bed, peck �IPA �)�. In Southern andMidland dialects this vowel before nasal conso-

nants often has a raised articulation that approximates �i�,so that pen has nearly the pronunciation ��pin�.

Many varieties of English do not allow �e� to be fol-lowed by an �r� which begins the following syllable. Insuch a case, the sequence of �e-r� is replaced by �er�, andword pairs like very and vary are homophones. This is notalways indicated in transcription. The reader should as-sume that any sequences of �e-r� will be �er� for suchspeakers.

� er � as in bare, fair, wear, derriere, millionaire�IPA �eV, )V�. The initial element of this diph-

thong may vary from �e� to ���. Speakers of r-dropping di-alects will pronounce �er� without any r-color on the sec-ond element �IPA �eə, )ə� when it precedes a consonant orpause, but will usually insert an �r� after �er� when it pre-cedes a vowel. �See the section on �r�.

� �e• , e• � in stressed syllables as in beat, nose-bleed, evenly, easy �IPA �i�.

Many speakers will insert �ə� after ��� when it precedes�l�. Additionally, some speakers pronounce ��� and �i�identically before �l�, with the result that word pairs likeheel and hill are homophones. The sound pronounced insuch cases may be either ��� or �i� as pronounced by thosewho distinguish the two.

� e• � in unstressed syllables, as in easy, mealy �IPA �i,�, 2�. Though the fact is not shown in this book,

some dialects such as southern British and southern U.S.often, if not usually, pronounce �i� instead of unstressed���.

� f � as in fifty, cuff �IPA �f�.

� g � as in go, big, gift �IPA �g�.

� h � as in hat, ahead �IPA �h�.

�hw� as in whale as pronounced by those who do nothave the same pronunciation for both whale

and wail. Some U.S. speakers distinguish these two wordsas ��hw�l� and ��w�l� respectively, though frequently in theU.S. and usually in southern England ��w�l� is used forboth. Some linguists consider �hw� to be a single sound, avoiceless �w� �IPA �{�.

� i � as in tip, banish, active �IPA ���.Some speakers pronounce ��� and �i� identical-

ly before �l�, with the result that word pairs like heel andhill are homophones. The sound pronounced in such casesmay be either ��� or �i� as pronounced by those who distin-guish the two.

When it precedes �ŋ�, �i� is often followed by a �y�sound. The resulting sound often greatly resembles ���.

� ir � as in near, deer, mere, pier, souvenir �IPA �iV,�V�. The initial element of this diphthong may

vary from �� to �i�. Speakers of r-dropping dialects willpronounce �ir� without any r-color on the second element�IPA �iə, �ə� when it precedes a consonant or pause, butwill usually insert an �r� after �ir� when it precedes a vow-el. �See the section on �r�.

� �• � as in site, side, buy, tripe �IPA �a�, ai, "�, "i�. Ac-tually, this sound is a diphthong, usually com-

posed of ��� + �i�. In Southern speech, especially before a

Guide to Pronunciation 35a

pause or voiced consonant, as in shy and five, the secondelement �i� may not be pronounced �IPA �aI��. Chiefly ineastern Virginia, coastal South Carolina, and parts of Can-ada the diphthong is approximately ��ə� + �i� before voice-less consonants, as in nice and write �IPA �$���.

Many varieties of English do not allow ��� to be followedby �l� in the same syllable. Speakers of such varieties willinsert a following �ə� which creates a new syllable. This isindicated by the transcription ���-ə�l�. For such speakers,file will rhyme with denial. Also, many varieties of Englishdo not allow ��� to be followed by �r� in the same syllable.Speakers of such varieties will transform the following �r�into �ər�, thus creating a new syllable. This is indicated bythe transcription ���-ə�r�. For such speakers, fire willrhyme with higher.

� j � as in job, gem, edge, join, judge. Actually, thissound is �d� + �zh� �IPA �&��. Assuming the angli-

cization of Jeanne d�Arc as �zhn-�drk�, the distinction be-tween the sentences They betray John Dark and They be-trayed Jeanne d�Arc is maintained by a difference in thesyllabication of the �d� and the �zh� in each case and theconsequent use of different varieties �or allophones� of �d�.

� k � as in kin, cook, ache �IPA �k��.

� k � as in German ich I,� Buch book,� and one pro-nunciation of English loch. Actually, there are

two distinct sounds in German� the � � in ich �IPA ���� ispronounced toward the front of the mouth and the � � inBuch is pronounced toward the back �IPA �x��. In English,however, no two words otherwise identical are distin-guished by these two varieties of � �, and therefore only asingle symbol is necessary.

� l � as in lily, pool �IPA �l, 4��. In words such as battleand fiddle the �l� is a syllabic consonant �IPA �6��.

�See the section on ��� above.�

�m� as in murmur, dim, nymph �IPA �m��. In pronun-ciation variants of some words, such as open and

happen, �m� is a syllabic consonant �IPA �7��. �See the sec-tion on ��� above.�

�n� as in no, own �IPA �n��. In words such as cottonand sudden, the �n� is a syllabic consonant �IPA

�8��. �See the section on ��� above.�

� � � indicates that a preceding vowel or diphthong ispronounced with the nasal passages open, as in

French un bon vin blanc ���-b��-va�-bl�� a good whitewine.�

� ŋ � as in sing ��siŋ�, singer ��siŋ-ər�, finger ��fiŋ-gər�,ink ��iŋk� �IPA �ŋ��. In some rare contexts �ŋ�

may be a syllabic consonant �IPA �9��. �See the section on��� above.�

� o• � as in bone, know, beau �IPA �o, oC, ou��. Espe-cially in positions of emphasis, such as when it

occurs at the end of a word or has primary stress, ��� tendsto become diphthongal, moving from ��� toward a secondelement ���. In southern England and in some U.S. speech,particularly in the Philadelphia area and in thePennsylvania-Ohio-West Virginia border area, the first ele-ment is often approximately �ə�. In coastal South Carolina,Georgia, and Florida stressed ��� is often monophthongalwhen final, but when a consonant follows it is often adiphthong moving from ��� to �ə�. In this book the symbol��� represents all of the above variants. As an unstressedvowel before another vowel, ��� is often pronounced as aschwa with slight lip rounding that is separated from thefollowing vowel by the glide �w�, as in following �f-lə-

wiŋ�. This reduced variant is not usually shown at individ-ual entries.

� o� � as in saw, all, gnaw, caught �IPA �<��. �See thesection on ��.�

Speakers of r-dropping dialects will usually insert an �r�after ��� when ��� precedes another vowel. �See the sec-tion on �r�.�

��� as in French boeuf beef,� German H�lle hell��IPA ����. This vowel, which occurs only in

foreign-derived terms and names, can be approximated byattempting to pronounce the vowel �e� with the lips mod-erately rounded as for the vowel ���. This vowel is oftenanglicized as the �ər� of bird by those who do not droptheir r�s� or as the corresponding vowel of bird used bythose who do �see the section on �r��.

This symbol is also used to represent the vowel inFrench feu fire,� German H�hle hole� �IPA �ø��. Thisvowel, which occurs primarily in foreign-derived termsand names, can be approximated by attempting to pro-nounce a monophthongal vowel ��� with the lips fullyrounded as for the vowel ���. This vowel also occurs inScots and thus is used in the pronunciation of guidwillie,mainly restricted to Scotland.

�o� ��� as in coin, destroy �IPA �<�, <i, o�, oi��. In someSouthern speech, especially before a consonant

in the same word, the second element may disappear or bereplaced by �ə�. Some utterances of drawing and sawinghave a sequence of vowel sounds identical to that in coin,but because drawing and sawing are analyzed by many astwo-syllable words they are transcribed with a parenthe-sized hyphen: ��dr��-�iŋ�, ��s��-�iŋ�.

Many varieties of English do not allow ��i� to be fol-lowed by �l� in the same syllable. Speakers of such varie-ties will insert a following �ə� which creates a new syllable.This is indicated by the transcription ��i�-ə�l�. For suchspeakers, oil will rhyme with loyal.

�o�r � as in boar, port, door, shore �IPA �oV, <V��. Theinitial element of this diphthong may vary

from ��� to ���. Speakers of r-dropping dialects will usual-ly pronounce ��r� the same as ���. �See the section on �r�.�Historically, there has been a contrast between the vowelin words like ore, bore, porch, sport, and hoarse on onehand and the vowel in words like or, for, torch, short, andhorse on the other hand. The vowel in the former set ofwords has been much like ���, and the vowel in the latterset like ���. However, the number of speakers that makesuch a distinction is currently very small, and we have notrepresented the distinction in this dictionary.

� p � as in pepper, lip �IPA �p��.

� r � as in red, rarity. What is transcribed here as �r�in reality represents several distinct sounds. Be-

fore a stressed vowel �r� denotes a continuant producedwith the tongue tip slightly behind the teethridge �IPA �>��.This sound is usually voiceless when it follows a voicelessstop, as in pray, tree, and cram.

In Received Pronunciation �r� is sometimes pronouncedas a flap �IPA �=�� in the same contexts in which �t� and �d�occur as flaps in American English. �See the section on �t�below.� Occasionally the flap may be heard after conso-nants, as in bright and grow. In other dialects of British En-glish, particularly Scots, �r� may be pronounced as an alve-olar trill �IPA �r�� or as a uvular trill �IPA ����.

In some dialects, especially those of the southeasternU.S., eastern New England, New York City, and southernEngland, �r� is not pronounced or is pronounced as �ə� af-ter a vowel in the same syllable. Such dialects are often re-ferred to as r-dropping dialects. This term is somewhatmisleading, since speakers of such dialects will often pro-nounce an �r� in certain situations where speakers of non�

36a Guide to Pronunciation

r-dropping dialects will not have an �r�. This matter is dis-cussed in some of the other sections of this Guide.

� s � as in source, less �IPA �s��.

� sh� as in shy, mission, machine, special �IPA �@��.Actually, this is a single sound, not two. When

the two sounds �s� and �h� occur in sequence, they are sep-arated by a hyphen in this book, as in grasshopper ��gras-�h�-pər�.

� t � as in tie, attack, late, later, latter �IPA �t��. Insome contexts, as when a stressed or unstressed

vowel precedes and an unstressed vowel or �l� follows, thesound represented by t or tt is pronounced in most Ameri-can speech as a voiced flap produced by the tongue tiptapping the teethridge �IPA �=��. In similar contexts thesound represented by d or dd has the same pronunciation.Thus, the pairs ladder and latter, leader and liter, parodyand parity are often homophones. At the end of a syllable�t� often has an incomplete articulation with no release, orit is accompanied or replaced by a glottal closure. When�t� occurs before the syllabic consonant �n� as in button��bə-tn�, the glottal allophone is often heard. This may re-flect a syllabication of �t� with the preceding stressed sylla-ble �i.e., ��bət-n��.

Many speakers pronounce �t� like �ch� when it occursbefore �r� in the same syllable.

� th� as in thin, ether �IPA �B��. Actually, this is a sin-gle sound, not two. When the two sounds �t�

and �h� occur in sequence they are separated by a hyphenin this book, as in knighthood ��n�t-�h�d�. In some dialectsof American English, �th� is regularly replaced by �f�.

� � as in then, either, this �IPA �ð��. Actually, this isa single sound, not two. The difference between

�th� and � � is that the former is pronounced without andthe latter with vibration of the vocal cords.

� u � as in rule, youth, union ��y�n-yən�, few ��fy���IPA �u��. As an unstressed vowel before another

vowel, ��� is often pronounced as a schwa with slight liprounding that is separated from the following vowel by theglide �w�, as in valuing ��val-yə-wiŋ�. This reduced variantis not usually shown at individual entries. Younger speak-ers of American English often use a more centralized andless rounded pronunciation of ��� in certain words �asnews and musician�, both in stressed and especially in un-stressed syllables.

Some speakers pronounce ��� and ��� identically before�l�, with the result that word pairs like pool and pull arehomophones. The sound pronounced in such cases may beeither ��� or ��� as pronounced by those who distinguishthe two.

� u� � as in pull, wood, book �IPA �C��. Some speakerspronounce ��� and ��� identically before �l�,

with the result that word pairs like pool and pull are homo-phones. The sound pronounced in such cases may be ei-

ther ��� or ��� as pronounced by those who distinguish thetwo.

��� as in German f�llen �to fill,� h�bsch �hand-some� �IPA �E��. This vowel, which occurs only

in foreign-derived terms and names, can be approximatedby attempting to pronounce the vowel �i� with the lipsmoderately rounded as for the vowel ���.

This symbol is also used to represent the vowel inFrench rue �street,� German f�hlen �to feel� �IPA �y��.This vowel, which occurs only in foreign-derived termsand names, can be approximated by attempting to pro-nounce the vowel ��� with the lips fully rounded as for thevowel ���.

��r � as in poor, tour, insure �IPA �uV, CV��. The ini-tial element of this diphthong may vary from

��� to ���. Speakers of r-dropping dialects will pronounce��r� without any r-color on the second element �IPA �uə,Cə�� when it precedes a consonant or pause, but will usual-ly insert an �r� after ��r� when it precedes a vowel. �See thesection on �r�.� Many speakers do not have the dipththong��r� and have merged it with either �ər� �when it followspalatal consonants such as �sh�, �ch�, or �y� in words likesure, mature, or obscure� or ��r� �in other environments�.Similarly, many speakers of r-dropping dialects havemerged ��r� with �ər� and ��� in the same respective envi-ronments.

� v � as in vivid, invite �IPA �v��.

� w � as in we, away �IPA �w��.

� y � as in yard, young, cue ��ky��, curable ��ky�r-ə-bəl�, few ��fy��, fury ��fy�r-��, union ��y�n-yən�

�IPA �j��. The sequences �ly��, �sy��, and �zy�� in the samesyllable, as in lewd, suit, and presume, are common insouthern British speech but are rare in American speechand only �l��, �s��, and �z�� are shown in this dictionary.A sequence of �h� and �y� as in hue and huge is pro-nounced by some speakers as a ��� articulated toward thefront of the mouth �IPA ����.

� y � indicates that during the articulation of the pre-ceding consonant the tongue has substantially

the position it has for the articulation of the �y� of yard, asin French digne �d�n�� �worthy.� Thus ��� does not itselfrepresent a sound but rather modifies the preceding sym-bol.

� z � as in zone, raise �IPA �z��.

� zh� as in vision, azure ��a-zhər� �IPA �F��. Actually,this is a single sound, not two. When the two

sounds �z� and �h� occur in sequence, they are separatedby a hyphen in this book, as in hogshead ��h�gz-�hed,�h�gz-�.

Guide to Pronunciation 37a

Abbreviations in This WorkAdditional abbreviations are entered in the main vocabulary of this dictionary.

A.&M. Agricultural andMechanical

ab aboutabbr abbreviationabl ablativeAcad Academyacc accusativeact activeA.D. anno Dominiadj adjectiveadv adverbAF Anglo-FrenchAFB Air Force BaseAfr AfricanAfrik AfrikaansAgric AgricultureAlb Albanianalter alterationAm America, AmericanAmer AmericanAmerF American FrenchAmerInd American IndianAmerSp American Spanishanc ancient, ancientlyant antonymanthropol anthropologist,anthropology

aor aoristAr ArabicArab ArabianAram Aramaicarchaeol archaeologistArm Armenianart articleastron astronomer, astronomyattrib attributive, attributivelyatty attorneyaug augmentativeAustral AustralianAv AvestanAV Authorized Versionb bornbacteriol bacteriologistB.C. before Christ, BritishColumbia

bef beforeBelg BelgianBeng Bengalibet betweenbib biblicalbiochem biochemistbiol biologistBraz BrazilianBrazPg Brazilian PortugueseBret BretonBrit Britain, Britishbro brotherBulg Bulgarianc centuryC centigrade, Collegeca circaCanad CanadianCanF Canadian Frenchcap capital, capitalizedCatal Catalancaus causativeCelt Celticcen central

cent centurychem chemistChin Chinesecomb combiningComm Communitycompar comparativeConfed Confederateconj conjugation, conjunctionconstr constructioncontr contractionCopt CopticCorn Cornishcriminol criminologistd diedD DutchDan Daniel, Danishdat dativedau daughterdef definitedial dialectdim diminutivedisc discoveredDor Doricdram dramatistDu DutchDV Douay Versione easternE east, eastern, Englishecon economistEd Educationeduc educatorEGmc East GermanicEgypt Egyptianemp emperorEng England, Englishequiv equivalentesp especiallyest estimatedethnol ethnologistexc exceptF Fahrenheit, Frenchfem feminineFinn Finnishfl flourishedFlem Flemishfr fromFr France, Frenchfreq frequentativeFris Frisianft feetfut futureG GermanGael Gaelicgen general, genitiveGer GermanGk GreekGmc GermanicGoth Gothicgov governorgovt governmentGr Brit Great BritainHeb Hebrewhist historianHitt HittiteHung HungarianIcel IcelandicIE Indo-Europeanimit imitative

imper imperativeincho inchoativeindef indefiniteindic indicativeinfin infinitiveInst Instituteinstr instrumentalintens intensiveinterj interjectioninterrog interrogativeIr Irishirreg irregularIs islandISV International ScientificVocabulary

It, Ital Italianital italicJav JavaneseJp JapaneseL LatinLaF Louisiana Frenchlat latitudeLat LatinLG Low GermanLGk Late GreekLHeb Late Hebrewlit literally, literaryLith LithuanianLL Late Latinlong longitudem metersmanuf manufacturermasc masculinemath mathematicianMBret Middle BretonMD Middle DutchME Middle EnglishMech MechanicalMed MedicalMex Mexican, MexicoMexSp Mexican SpanishMF Middle FrenchMGk Middle GreekMHG Middle High Germanmi milesmil militarymin ministerMIr Middle IrishML Medieval LatinMLG Middle Low GermanModE Modern EnglishModGk Modern GreekModHeb Modern Hebrewmodif modificationMPers Middle PersianMS manuscriptmt mountainMt MountMW Middle Welshn northern, nounN north, northernnaut nauticalNE northeastneut neuterNewEng New EnglandNewZeal New ZealandNfld.&Lab. Newfoundland andLabrador

NGk New GreekNL New LatinNo Northnom nominativenonstand nonstandardNorw Norwegiannov novelistn pl noun pluralNZ New Zealandobs obsoleteoccas occasionallyOCS Old Church SlavicODan Old DanishOE Old EnglishOF Old FrenchOFris Old FrisianOHG Old High GermanOIr Old IrishOIt Old ItalianOL Old LatinON Old NorseOPers Old PersianOPg Old PortugueseOProv Old Proven�alOPruss Old Prussianorig original, originallyORuss Old RussianOS Old SaxonOSp Old SpanishOSw Old SwedishOW Old WelshPaG Pennsylvania Germanpart participlepass passivePers Persianperf perfectperh perhapspers personPg Portuguesephilos philosopher

PhilSp Philippine Spanishphysiol physiologistpl pluralPol Polishpolit political, politicianpop populationPort Portuguesepp past participleprec precedingprep prepositionpres present, presidentprob probablypron pronoun, pronunciationpronunc pronunciationprp present participlePruss Prussianpseud pseudonympsychol psychologistR.C. Roman CatholicREB Revised English Bibleredupl reduplicationrefl reflexiverel relativeresp respectivelyrev revolutionRom Roman, RomanianRSV Revised Standard VersionRuss RussianS south, southernSc Scottish, ScotsScand ScandinavianScGael Scottish GaelicSch SchoolScot Scotland, Scottishsecy secretarySem Seminary, SemiticShak Shakespearesing singular

Skt SanskritSlav SlavicSo SouthSoAfr South Africa, SouthAfrican

sociol sociologistSp, Span Spanishspecif specificallyspp speciesSt SaintSte Saintesubj subjunctivesubsp subspeciessubstand substandardsuperl superlativeSw, Swed Swedishsyn synonym, synonymySyr SyriacTag TagalogTech Technologytheol theologianTheol TheologicalToch Tochariantrans translationtreas treasuryTurk TurkishU Universityultim ultimatelyusu usuallyvar variant, varietyv, vb verbvi verb intransitiveVL Vulgar Latinvoc vocativevt verb transitiveW Welsh, west, westernWGmc West Germaniczool zoologist

Abbreviations in This Work 39a

Pronunciation SymbolsFor more information see the Guide to Pronunciation.

ə .... banana, collide, abut

�ə, �ə .... humdrum, abut

� .... immediately preceding �l�, �n�, �m�, �ŋ�, asin battle, mitten, eaten, and sometimes open���-p�m�, lock and key �-�ŋ-�� immediatelyfollowing �l�, �m�, �r�, as often in French ta-ble, prisme, titre

ər .... further, merger, bird

�ər- �ə-r.... as in two different pronunciations of hurry

��hər-, �hə-r�

a .... mat, map, mad, gag, snap, patch

� .... day, fade, date, aorta, drape, cape

� .... bother, cot

�r .... car, heart, bazaar, bizarre

a .... now, loud, out

b .... baby, rib

ch .... chin, nature ��n�-chər�

d .... did, adder

e .... bet, bed, peck

er .... bare, fair, wear, millionaire

�, � .... beat, nosebleed, evenly, easy

.... easy, mealy

f .... fifty, cuff

g .... go, big, gift

h .... hat, ahead

hw .... whale as pronounced by those who do nothave the same pronunciation for both whaleand wail

i .... tip, banish, active

ir .... near, deer, mere, pier

� .... site, side, buy, tripe

j .... job, gem, edge, join, judge

k .... kin, cook, ache

� .... German ich, Buch� one pronunciation ofloch

l .... lily, pool

m .... murmur, dim, nymph

n .... no, own

� .... indicates that a preceding vowel or diph-thong is pronounced with the nasal passagesopen, as in French un bon vin blanc ���-b��-va�-bl���

ŋ .... sing ��siŋ�, singer ��siŋ-ər�, finger ��fiŋ-gər�,ink ��iŋk�

� .... bone, know, beau

� .... saw, all, gnaw, caught

� .... French boeuf, feu, German H�lle, H�hle

�i .... coin, destroy

�r .... boar, port, door, shore

p .... pepper, lip

r .... red, rarity

s .... source, less

sh .... as in shy, mission, machine, special �actual-ly, this is a single sound, not two�� with a hy-phen between, two sounds as in grasshopper��gras-�h�-pər�

t .... tie, attack, late, later, latter

th .... as in thin, ether �actually, this is a singlesound, not two�� with a hyphen between,two sounds as in knighthood ��n�t-�h d�

� .... then, either, this �actually, this is a singlesound, not two�

� .... rule, youth, union ��y�n-yən�, few ��fy��

.... pull, wood, book

� .... German f�llen, h�bsch, f�hlen, French rue

r .... boor, tour, insure

v .... vivid, give

w .... we, away

y .... yard, young, cue ��ky��, mute ��my�t�,union ��y�n-yən�

� .... indicates that during the articulation of thesound represented by the preceding charac-ter, the front of the tongue has substantiallythe position it has for the articulation of thefirst sound of yard, as in French digne�dn��

z .... zone, raise

zh .... as in vision, azure ��a-zhər� �actually, this isa single sound, not two�� with hyphen be-tween, two sounds as in hogshead ��h�gz-�hed, �h�gz-�

� .... reversed virgule used in pairs to mark thebeginning and end of a transcription: ��pen�

� .... mark preceding a syllable with primary�strongest� stress: ��pen-mən-�ship�

� .... mark preceding a syllable with secondary�medium� stress: ��pen-mən-�ship�

- .... mark of syllable division

� � .... indicate that what is symbolized between ispresent in some utterances but not in oth-ers: factory ��fak-t�ə-�r�

÷ .... indicates that many regard as unacceptablethe pronunciation variant immediately fol-lowing: nuclear ��n�-kl-ər, �ny�-, ÷-kyə-lər�

40a