Oxford's English dictionaries describe the normative pronunciation of Standard English using the International Phonetic Alphabet. However, individual speakers will produce slight variations of certain sounds without changing the meaning of the word in which they occur. For example, 'with' may be pronounced /wth/ or /w/, 'darkness' /dkns/ or /dkns/, etc. This is known as 'free variation' and may be heard in the voice recordings.
The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is a historical dictionary of modern English. It sets out the main meanings and semantic developments of words current at any time between
1700 and the present day: those which have been in regular literary or colloquial use at some point in their history; slang or dialect words which are nevertheless likely to be generally encountered through accessible literature or the modern mass media; and in addition a wide range of scientific and technical words such as may be of interest to serious amateurs or advanced students. Every headword is traced back to the time of its first known use, however early, in many cases to the manuscript records of the Old and Middle English periods. Words which have fallen into disuse during the past three centuries are included if they meet the other general criteria. Words which became obsolete before 1700 appear if they are significant in the formation or history of some other headword in the text, of if they remain familiar from the works of Shakespeare, the 1611 Authorized Version of the Bible, and a small number of other influential literary sources (notably the poems of John Milton and Edmund Spense's Faerie Queene).
2.1 TYPES OF ENTRY
There are four basic types of entry in this dictionary: standard entries, combining entries, letter entries, and variant entries.
2.1.1 Standard entries. The majority of entries are standard entries. In these the headword, or word being defined, does not belong to any of the other three entry types below. The typical standard entry has a headword, pronunciation (in the International Phonetic Alphabet), part of speech (in italic), date (expressed as a period of part of a century), etymology (in square brackets [ ]), and definition section. The definition section may be accompanied by one or more paragraphs containing illustrative quotations, phrases which contain the headword, compounds whose first element is the headword, or derivatives consisting of the headword and a suffix. Usage indicators (labels), variant spellings, and grammatical or other information may also appear in the entry. More information on all these features is given in section 4.
2.1.2 Combining entries. In these entries the headword either begins or ends with a hyphen, and in use generally occurs joined to another word (either hyphenated or as a solid word). Combining entries include affixes of three types: suffixes (like -ly, -ness), prefixes (like re-, un-), and combining forms (like hyper-, kilo-). See further under section 6 below.
2.1.3 Letter entries. Each letter of the alphabet has an entry which contains a brief account of the history of the letter and a selection of abbreviations and acronyms which begin with that letter. See further under section 7 below.
2.1.4 Variant entries. A variant entry refers an alternative spelling or grammatical form of a headword to the standard or combining entry with the main form and all other information. See further under section 8 below.
2.2 ORDERING OF ENTRIES
Entries are accessed in strict alphabetical order. Those with hyphens or spaces follow otherwise identical words written solid; a headword with an accent or diacritic over a letter follows one consisting of the same sequence of letters without. Capital and lower-case letters are regarded as equivalent. Strict alphabetical order applies also to pre-fixes of titles and names (such as Mc-, St (saint)) which in other contexts may conventionally be placed elsewhere.
