Criteria for Inclusion

Guide to Entries

Pronunciation Guide

Abbreviations

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Criteria for Inclusion

Terms are only included in the dictionary if it can be demonstrated that the term is used by a variety of sources for a period of at least five years. Many business and high-tech jargon terms are of nonce, fleeting, or otherwise limited use. To be included, at least five citations of use from a variety of sources (not including dictionaries or lists of business or high-tech terms) must be found that cover a period of at least five years. If this dictionary entry lists fewer than five citations, more exist in our files, but those not listed are similar to the ones given.

Guide to Entries

Each entry in the dictionary is divided into several sections:

• Headword. In bold. The term in question.
• Part of Speech. The function of the term in a sentence, noun, adjective, verb, phrase, etc.
• Pronunciation. The standard pronunciation of the term, given in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols. Pronunciations are generally not given for terms and phrases consisting of common English words and affixes.
• Definition. The meaning, or sense, of the term. Variant forms and alternate spellings, if they exist, are listed here as well.
• Etymology. The origin of the term.
• Last Updated. The date this entry was last modified.
• Usage Citations. Examples of the term's usage from a variety of sources. These are actual "real world" examples that of people actually using the term. We attempt to give the earliest known usage of the term, but we cannot guarantee that the first citation we list is actually the first usage. We attempt to give at least one example for each decade of the twenty-first and twentieth centuries and, for older terms, at least two citations for each earlier century. Citations preceded by an asterisk (*) are either ambiguous and may not be examples of the term in question or are another sense of the term and are included to illustrate the history of the term or to be complete. Usage citations are broken out into two sections:
• Source. This is the source of the quotation. The link connects to our bibliographic entry for that source.
• Quotation. The quotation itself. Quotations are exact. Exceptions to this are independent clauses and portions of quotations contained in brackets. If the quotation in the original can stand as an independent clause, the first word in the quotation may be capitalized and the quotation may end with a period even if it is part of a longer sentence in the original. Portions of the quotation contained within brackets are added by us, usually either inserting a noun in place of what was in the original a pronoun for clarity or the addition of an editorial note. [...] means that words have been omitted.

The following is an example entry:

Pronunciation Guide

Pronunciations are given using the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA. The symbols represent sounds as follows:

Abbreviations Used

A

C

D

F

J

M

N

O

P

S

V

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