The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English [antikvár]

PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION IN this edition the etymologies have been thoroughly revised, and for the most part rewritten, by G. W. S. Friedrichsen, to whom I express my sincere thanks for undertaking a laborious task. Numerous correspondents have sent in useful suggestions for improving the dictionary, all of which are gratefully acknowledged and many of which have been adopted in part or in full. Particular mention must be made of the contributions of P. B. M. Allan, R. W. Burchfield (who read through the proofs), the late Dr R. W. Chapman, L. F. Schooling, and G. C. Varmeck. With regard to hyphening, some doubt is often felt when the hyphen in a word coincides with the end of a line. To clarify the matter a true hyphen is repeated at the beginning of the following E. McI., 1963 PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION IN this completely revised and reset edition numerous corrections and additions have been made to bring the book up to date. Thanks are due to the many correspondents who have pointed out errors or suggested improvements. Especially must I express my gratitude to Dr Scholes, Dr Honeyman, and Mr J. M. WyUie for the valuable assistance given for musical terms, chemical terms, and many technical terms. The officials of the Clarendon Press too, past and present, have throughout been most helpful. In this edition the system of pronunciation devised for the Pocket Oxford Dictionary has been adopted, the senses have been usually numbered, the general abbreviations have been collected into an appendix, and the swung dash has been freely employed. Swung dash To save space the 'swung dash' or 'tilde' is very frequently used in the body of the article or the list of derivatives. It represents either the complete word at the beginning of the article or the un-taflected part of that word often marked by a vertical hne. As, for example, in the article repeat, r^ stands for repeat (or repeat), r^ed for repeated, '^edLY^ for repeatedLY^, r^ng for repeating, /^br^ for repeatEB^; and in the article reverber|ate we have rating, '-'ate, «^atOBY, '~ATioi«r, '--'ATiVE, —^ANT representing reverberating, reverberate, reverberatOBY, reverberATioN, reverberATivB, rever- E. Mol., 1950