Questions tagged [dictionaries]
Questions about English dictionaries
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What is the meaning of formal behavior? [closed]
I've looked in the dictionaries and I looked in Dictionary.com for "Formal" and it says "excessively ceremonious" what would ceremonious mean? According to the dictionary it says "following ceremony" ...
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Cloudy pillar or pillar of cloud [closed]
Could someone help me understand the difference between a cloudy pillar and a pillar of cloud? I know they could be used synonymously, but I want to know if there is any discrapancy between the two in ...
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Why do dictionaries transcribe the nasal in 'think' and 'language' with /ŋ/, yet 'input' and 'inbox' with /n/, not /m/?
In English, coda nasals assimilate to the following consonant, so 'n' in "in mail" and "own goal" is pronounced with [m] and [ŋ] respectively, right? If so, then why do most dictionaries transcribe ...
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How to choose the meaning of a word from many meanings [closed]
To increase my vocabulary, I collect words from my daily study and then find them in the Cambridge dictionary. But one word has many meanings. It is sometimes hard to memorize all of them, and it is ...
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Use of "low" in a dictionary definition as a paralexical indicator
What is the meaning of "low" in this definition?
puff, … 4. Life; existence: tailors' > (low) gen.: from ca. 1880. As in never in one's puff, never …
In Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and ...
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What word describes the act of convincing someone to buy you a meal or drink?
The context of this question is as followed: I was in a meeting where two people had placed a bet on the outcome of an event. The deal was that the loser would buy the winner a drink. As they were ...
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Is waterfall a place or a fall of water?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines 'waterfall' in this way: water, especially from a river or stream, dropping from a higher to a lower point, sometimes from a great height.
However, the Collins ...
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The recent invention of the word "heterosexual"
I read an article on the BBC whose title caught my interest. It's called "The invention of heterosexuality". It's quite a lengthy article, and goes through what it claims is the very short history of ...
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Is "criterions" a valid plural for "criterion"?
Is criterions a valid plural for criterion?
Dictionary.com says it is, but Oxford does not confirm or reject it.
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Is the Concise Oxford Dictionary British English?
Last year I submitted a manuscript to a journal. The guidelines said that it can be written in British English or in American English, but not mixed. So I chose British English.
Now I must resubmit ...
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Are people using 'of' differently today than they were 20 years ago? [closed]
Of 'of': Expressing Possession and Being Possessed
The definition of 'of' was changed in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) from the 1989 edition to the 2010 edition. Below are 2 sub-topics regarding ...
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"Smooths" versus "Smoothes"
I am interested in the rapid rise (since about 1993) in frequency of the spelling smoothes as against smooths.
An Ngram Viewer graph tracking the frequency of usage of the two words from 1800 to 2005 ...
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What is the past simple and past participle of spit? Each online dictionary has different form
Cambridge: past tense and past participle : here is the cambridge link:spat.https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/spit#british-1-1-2
Oxford:spits, spitting, spat, spitted
Oxford link :...
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Is there a term for noises which CAN'T be written as normal text?
Hard to give examples, as if I'm able to do it, I won't be asking this, but consider some sounds made by the tongue.
I'm giving examples of sounds which CAN be written to give you an idea:
Dog ...
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Missing definition of “night and day”
I am trying to see if the colloquial usage of night and day is non-standard and is improper register, or if it is simply an ommitted definition in the dictionaries:
night and day: Describing a ...
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For those who use American English, how do you use your dictionary for this? [closed]
Please DO NOT answer this question if you use British English. You might help by answering the other question I posted just before this one.
I have found examples suggesting there is a fundamental ...
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Do AmE and BrE dictionaries treat compound adjectives differently?
My (BrE) OED and (AmE) dictionary.com both list the adjective 'middle-class' with a hyphen.
The OED provides these examples:
a middle-class attitude
The magazine is very middle-class.
The (AmE)...
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Does "liege" mean master or servant?
Searching online, I see the two definitions for liege (noun) given by Merriam-Webster
a: a vassal bound to feudal service and allegiance
b: a loyal subject
a feudal superior to whom ...
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US Equivalent to the Oxford English Dictionary
Apologies if this question is inappropriate for the site.
In the US, what would be equivalent to the OED? The de facto standard. I know there's the New Oxford American Dictionary but in the US does ...
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Did the verb "to start" originally mean "to spring involuntarily" or "to begin"?
I looked up the word "start" recently on Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, and I seem to remember that the order of definitions is historical: the first historical definition comes first, ...
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Phrase "If you don't go, I will not go"
I am trying to find a term/word for the phrase "If you do not go, I will not go" in the context of trying to put pressures on others to attend events. I have begun to hear this heavily as we approach ...
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What is the name for "pronunciation spelling"?
Dictionaries often have "pronunciation spelling" listed next to the word. For example:
port·man·teau - noun \pȯrt-ˈman-(ˌ)tō\
What is the name for this alphabet/system? Is it a universal system, ...
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How to find a word to fit a meaning?
I need to find a word that would have a reasonably close meaning to:
a collection of facts and arguments used to arrive at an explanation [of some (thing|concept|idea|...)]
More generally, I ...
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Specific vocabulary request for a family of words [duplicate]
This is my first question on this website, so I hope I don't embarrass myself.
While I was helping my friend study for the GRE exam, I noticed that a lot of the vocabulary lists contained two word ...
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Is 'deconfigured' a valid English word or could you suggest an alternative
I am writing an IT technical report and raising an issue in it, generally using a passive voice. I am struggling to find a phrase that is concise, does not have an alternative or confusing meaning yet ...
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"Languish" meaning: Cambridge or Oxford? [closed]
I was trying to look up the meaning of the word "Languish", and as usual, I looked it up using Cambridge Online Dictionary, and got the meaning:
to exist in an unpleasant or unwanted situation, often ...
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Why do online dictionaries not include a definition for the phrase "Thanks a mint"? [closed]
Granted, "Thanks a mint" is an old timey phrase from when people said quaint things like 23 skidoo. But search engines do return instances of people still using the phrase, and the Google question ...
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A possessive affix for words ending in 've'?
I was playing with my spell-checker, and decided to download up-to-date English (British) dictionaries from there.
One of the files that is essential for spell-checkers, in addition to the .dic files ...
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How do you say "to brown-bag it" in your neck of the woods?
Is the North American phrase "to brown-bag it"--which means to take a packed lunch to work, school, etc.--used or at least readily understood in the UK and other English-speaking countries? How would ...
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Does there exist a subset of words which can be used to define all others?
All words in the dictionary are defined by using other words. Has there been any research that has traced these definitions down to a subset of the English language which can define the rest of it? I'...
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Single word for copy paste errors [closed]
Is there a single word for copy paste errors? Just like "typo"
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What does the abbreviation 'compl.' mean in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
*Note: One might (understandably) think my question off-topic because the OED should list the abbreviations it uses, and if not, surely Google will have the answer. Please bear with me while I explain....
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Why does the Cambridge Dictionary use /eɪ/ for the vowel sound in "Sea Bass"?
Why does the Cambridge Dictionary use /eɪ/ as the vowel sound in bass in "Sea Bass"?
Is this caused by the plosive sound of B?
I think my ear is not distorted. It should be:
Sea Bass = /ˈsiː ...
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Need help understanding act and process for the definition of communication?
When I looked up the word "communication" at www.dictionary.com, it gave the following meaning below:
the act or process of communicating; fact of being communicated.
My question is based on the ...
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"for the nonce" in dictionaries
I've seen that "for the nonce", which doesn't appear very often in the online versions of dictionaries, is just designated as "somewhat formal" in Merriam-Webster and not designated in the Oxford ...
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Figurative use of words
I love creative writing and especially figurative language. So, very often I dig dictionaries to find the idiomatic uses of words that would potentially 'add spice' in a way I want.
All dictionaries ...
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How and when did American spelling supersede British spelling in the US?
Considering that Webster published his first dictionary in 1806, is there a recognised tipping point (year, decade, etc.) that marked the move from traditional British spelling to Webster's American? ...
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Is "antiturnpikeism" a real word, or a copyright trap?
The list of words in the OS X /usr/share/dict/words file includes the surprising word "antiturnpikeism". (It seems it's not OS X-specific. It's also in the wamerican package.) I can't seem to find ...
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Do any print dictionaries admit "everytime" as a word?
I've noticed a tendency for more and more two-word phrases with even slightly idiomatic usage being written more and more as single word compounds. Today when I came across "everytime" written as a ...
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Where can I obtain an English dictionary with structured data? [closed]
I would like to download an English dictionary -- not just a word list -- in a structured format such as TXT, XML, or SQL.
Specifically, I need phonetic pronunciation and parts of speech (definition ...
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Is "pronunciate" a word?
Is "pronunciate" a word? At first it doesn't seem to be, but why not? "Pronunciation" and "pronunciative" seem to be words, so it would seem natural that "pronunciate" would be.
After Googling, I ...
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When did "pizza" first appear in the dictionary? [closed]
My friend said "pizza" was not in a collegiate dictionary from the early 80s. He said he confirmed that recently when he found the same edition of that dictionary. I know the word has been around ...
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Source for etymological study
It has always been interesting for me to know how words are made and where they are coming from. Is there any reliable source for etymological studies? any books, or dictionaries out there?
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In layman's terms what does The O.D.O.'s definition note for the usage of the word "number" mean? [closed]
English is my first and only language, but when I read the Oxford Dictionary's (O.D.O.'s) definition note for the usage of the word "number" it was like I was reading an explanation meant for ...
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How does a non-dictionary word become a dictionary word
There are so many dictionaries and so many words. How do new words appear in dictionaries? If a a word appears in one dictionary can it be counted to be a dictionary word, an official one that anyone ...
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Which of these advanced learner's dictionary definitions of "adversity" is reliable?
I looked up adversity in three different advanced learner's dictionaries and here are the results.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th Edition: "a situation in which you have a lot of ...
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Verb [will] -- "rare" ? ----> 1. (rare, transitive) To wish, desire (something)
(Bold emphasis mine)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/will
Verb
(rare, transitive) To wish, desire (something). [9th-18th c.]
"Do what you will."
(rare, intransitive) To wish or ...
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About how many words of four letters are there in English?
I was trying to determine about how many words there are in English, with four letters. (Ideally, excluding "s" plural, so cats and dogs would not be included.)
Does anyone have any concrete ...
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How do 'area', 'region', and 'territory' differ? [closed]
When you consider separation for easy identification and management in sales, what would be the best explanations for area, region, and territory?
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Why can’t one be “trepid”?
Why can someone be intrepid but not trepid ?
The Free Dictionary and Merriam-Webster both consider trepid to be a real word, but my computer’s little spell-checker program does not recognize it as ...
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