Using a Dictionary

• A Guide words indicate the first and last words defined on a page. Refer to them to discover whether the term you are looking up is on that page.
• B Entry words being defined appear in bold type and in alphabetical order.
• C Pronunciation guides in parentheses show how vowels and consonants are pronounced and which syllables are accented.
• D Syllabication shows the entry word divided into syllables.
• E Spelling and capitalization of the entry word shows the conventional use of the term.
• F Part of speech abbreviations tell how a word is used in a sentence. Many words are used as more than one part of speech.
• G Definitions provide the denotative meaning of the term. Many terms have more than one definition, which are usually organized from the most common to the least common.
• H Etymology indicates the language origins of the word, using abbreviations for different language families.
• I Illustrations, either drawings or photographs, are given for some terms.
• J Variants indicate other spellings of the word. If a variant is preceded by or, the variant is equally accepted. If the variant is preceded by also, the main form is preferred.
• K Inflected forms are other forms of the word. For example, swim has the inflected forms swam and swum; the word taco has the inflected plural tacos; and child, the inflected plural children.

Other Dictionary Features

• Labels can indicate the subject a word refers to, such as biology, or to the status of the term, such as nonstandard, slang, informal, offensive, and so on.
• Examples show how the word is used in a sentence. Often, example sentences are taken from the work of well-known writers or historical figures.
• Idioms show how the word is used in a construction whose meaning, while familiar to a particular group, cannot be derived literally.