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
