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Variant spellings
The main form of each word given in the
New Oxford American Dictionary is always
the standard American spelling. If there is a standard variant, e.g., a standard
British spelling variant, this is indicated at the top of the entry and is cross-referred
if its alphabetical position is more than five entries distant from the main entry. For
examples, compare
esophagus
/
oesophagus
and
phyllo
/
filo
.
Other variants, such as archaic, old-fashioned, or informal spellings, are cross-
referred to the main entry, but are not themselves listed at the parent entry. For
example, compare
cyder
/
cider
.
Hyphenation
Although standard spelling in English is fixed, the use of hyphenation is not. In
standard American English, a few general rules are followed, and these are
outlined below.
Hyphenation of noun compounds:
There is no hard-and-fast rule to determine
whether, for example,
airstream
,
air stream
, or
air-stream
is correct. All forms are
found in use: all are recorded in the Oxford databank and other standard texts.
However, there is a broad tendency to avoid hyphenation for noun compounds in
modern English (except when used to show grammatical function: see below). Thus
there is, for example, a preference for
airstream
rather than
air-stream
, and for
air
raid
rather than
air-raid
. Although this is a tendency in both American and British
English, there is an additional preference in American English for the form to be
one word and in British English for the form to be two words, e.g.,
airfare
tends to
be the most common form in American English, while
air fare
tends to be the most
common form in British English. To save space and avoid confusion, only one of the
three potential forms of each noun compound (the standard American one) is
generally used as the headword form in the New Oxford American Dictionary. This
does not, however, imply that other forms are incorrect or not used.
Grammatical function:
Hyphens are also used to perform certain grammatical
functions. When a noun compound made up of two separate words (e.g.,
credit
card
) is placed before another noun and used to modify it, the general rule is that
the noun compound becomes hyphenated, e.g.,
I have overused my credit card and
am now in credit-card debt. This sort of regular alternation is seen in example
sentences in the
New Oxford American Dictionary but is not otherwise explicitly
mentioned in the dictionary entries.
A similar alternation is found in compound adjectives such as
well intentioned
.
When used predicatively (i.e., after the verb), such adjectives are unhyphenated,
but when used attributively (i.e., before the noun), they are hyphenated:
his remarks
were well intentioned; a well-intentioned remark.
A general rule governing verb compounds means that, where a noun compound is
two words (e.g.,
beta test
), any verb derived from it is normally hyphenated (
to
beta-test
:
the system was beta-tested). Similarly, verbal nouns and adjectives are
more often hyphenated than ordinary noun or adjective compounds (e.g.,
epoch-
making
).
Inflection
Compared with other languages, English has comparatively few inflections, and
those that exist are remarkably regular. We add an -
s to most nouns to make a
plural; we add -
ed to most verbs to make a past tense or a past participle, and -ing
to make a present participle.
Occasionally, a difficulty arises: for example, a single consonant after a short
stressed vowel is doubled before adding -
ed or -ing (
hum
,
hums
,
humming
,
hummed
). In addition, words borrowed from other languages generally bring their
foreign inflections with them, causing problems for English speakers who are not
proficient in those languages.
In all such cases, guidance is given in the
New Oxford American Dictionary. The
main areas covered are outlined below.
Verbs
The following forms are regarded as regular and are therefore not shown in the
dictionary:
• third person singular present forms adding -
s to the stem (or -es to stems ending
in -
s, -x, -z, -sh, or soft -ch), e.g.,
find
→
finds
;
crush
→
crushes
• past tenses and past participles dropping a final silent
e and adding -ed to the
stem, e.g.,
change
→
changed
;
dance
→
danced
