mark those cases in which predicative use would be less usual.
[predic.]: used to mark an adjective that is normally used predicatively, i.e., comes after the verb, e.g., ajar in the door was ajar (not the ajar door).
[postpositive]: used to mark an adjective that is used postpositively, i.e., typically comes immediately after the noun that it modifies (such uses are unusual in English and generally arise because the adjective has been adopted from a language where postpositive use is standard), e.g., galore in there were prizes galore.
Terms relating to adverbs
[sentence adverb]: used to mark an adverb that stands outside a sentence or clause, providing commentary on it as a whole or showing the speaker’s or writer’s attitude to what is being said, rather than the manner in which something was done. Sentence adverbs most frequently express the speaker’s or writer’s point of view, although they may also be used to set a context by stating a field of reference, e.g., certainly.
[as submodifier]: used to mark an adverb that is used to modify an adjective or another adverb, e.g., comparatively.
Evidence and Illustrative Examples
The information presented in the dictionary about individual words is based on close analysis of how words behave in real, natural language. Behind every dictionary entry are examples of the word in
Databank and Citation Evidence
Extensive use has been made of Oxford’s text databank resources, which include a carefully balanced selection of 100 million words of written and spoken English text (equivalent to one person’s reading over ten years) in
Oxford’s own North American Reading Program, an ongoing research project in which readers select citations from a huge variety of specialist and nonspecialist sources in all varieties of English. These resources mean that Oxford lexicogra- phers are in a position to see how words normally behave. By using concordancing techniques, each word can be viewed almost instantaneously in the immediate contexts in which it is used. Since the Oxford Reading Program is ongoing, and growing at a rate of 4.5 million words a year, Oxford lexicographers have the most
The Oxford databank shows at a glance that some combinations of words (called “collocations”) occur together much more often than others. For example, concordance entries might show that “end in,” “end the,” and “end up” all occur quite often. But are any of these combinations important enough to be given special treatment in the dictionary?
Recent research has focused on identifying combinations that are not merely frequent but also statistically significant. In the Oxford databank, the two words “end the” occur frequently together but they do not form a statistically significant unit, since the word “the” is the most common in the language. The combinations end up and end in, on the other hand, are shown to be more significant and tell the lexicographer something about the way the verb end behaves in normal use. Of course, a dictionary for general use cannot go into detailed statistical analysis of word combinations, but it can present examples that are typical of normal usage. In the New Oxford American Dictionary particularly significant or important patterns are highlighted, in bold, e.g., end in, end up under end.
For further details, see the previous section on Grammar.
Specialist Reading
A general dictionary databank does not, by definition, contain large quantities of specialized terminology. For this reason, additional research and collection of citations in a number of neglected fields (for example, antique collecting, food and cooking, boats and sailing, photography, video and audio, martial arts, and alternative medicine) was done to ensure the thorough coverage of these fields. Additionally, specialists in nearly 100 different areas reviewed entries for accuracy.
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