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Under this head are here included: 1. (and mainly) Obsolete and variant forms of words, when these are so far removed in spelling as not to come closely before or after the regular forms, or readily to suggest them. These words are concisely referred to the main form to which they belong, with an explanatory synonym when the latter is itself obsolete; as almacantar, -urie, obs. ff. (= obsolete forms of) ALMUCANTAR; abugge, obs. w. and s.w.f. (= obsolete western and south-western form of) ABYE v.; almoise, -moyse, var. (= variant of) ALMOSE, Obs., alms. To economize space, variant forms which differ from the regular form only in the doubling of a single consonant or the converse, as appert for APERT, aple for APPLE, or in the interchange of u, v, or i, j, are not usually inserted. 2. Irregular or peculiar inflexions of Main Words. 3. Spurious or erroneous forms found in Dictionaries, or cited from single passages in authors, but having little or no claim to recognition as genuine constituents of the English vocabulary: their character is pointed, and their history briefly given. Entries for spurious words are enclosed in square brackets.
Under this term are included all collocations of simple words in which the separate spelling of each word is retained, whether they are formally connected by the hyphen, or virtually by the unity of their signification. The formal union and the actual by no means coincide: not only is the use of the hyphen a matter of indifference in an immense number of cases, but in many where it is habitually used, the combination implies no unity of signification; while others, in which there is a distinct unity or specialization of meaning, are not hyphenated. The primary use of the hyphen is grammatical: it implies either that the syntactic relation between two words is closer than if they stood side by side without it, or that the relation is a less usual one than that which would at first sight suggest itself to us, if we saw the two words standing unconnected. Thus, in the three sentences, ‘After consideration had been given to the proposal, it was duly accepted’, ‘After consideration the proposal was accepted’, ‘After-consideration had shown him his mistake’, we have first no immediate syntactic relation between after (conjunctive adverb) and consideration; secondly, the relation of preposition and object; thirdly, the relation of attribute and substantive, closer than the first, less usual than the second (since after is more commonly a preposition than an adjective). But after-consideration is not really a single word, any more than subsequent consideration, fuller consideration; the hyphen being merely a convenient help to the sense, which would be clearly expressed in speech by the different phrase-accentuation of 'after consider'ation and 'after conside'ration. And as this ‘help to the sense’ is not always equally necessary, nor its need equally appreciated in the same place, it is impossible that its use should be uniform. Nevertheless after-consideration, as used above, is on the way to becoming a single word, which reconsideration (chiefly because re- is not a separate word, but also because we have reconsider) is reckoned to be; and indeed close grammatical relation constantly accompanies close union of sense, so that in many combinations the hyphen becomes an expression of this unification of sense. When this unification and specialization has proceeded so far that we no longer analyse the combination into its elements, but take it in as a whole, as in blackberry, postman, newspaper, pronouncing it in speech with a single accent, the hyphen is usually omitted, and the fully developed compound is written as a single word. But as this also is a question of degree, there are necessarily many compounds as to which usage has not yet determined whether they are to be written with the hyphen or as single words. Many specialized combinations, indeed, are often not even hyphenated: especially is this the case with descriptive names, formed of a substantive preceded by an adjective or possessive case, or followed by a phrase, as Aaron's rod, all fours, Black Jack, Jack of all trades, Jew's harp, sea anemone.
There is thus considerable difficulty in determining to what extent combinations are matters for the lexicographer, and to what extent they are merely grammatical.
While no attempt is made fully to solve this difficulty, combinations formal and virtual are, for practical purposes, divided into three classes: First: those in which each word retains its full meaning, the relation between them falling under one or other of the ordinary grammatical categories. Of these, specimens merely are given, at the end of each article, which are printed in heavy italics, and illustrated collectively by a few quotations. Second: Combinations of which the signification is somewhat specialized, but still capable of being briefly explained in a few words, in connection with their cognates. These also are concisely treated at the end of the main article, where they are printed in small, dark bold type in an alphabetical series, and illustrated by quotations arranged in the same order. When these are very numerous the first usage of the word illustrated is typically distinguished in the quotation by prefixing *, in order that it may catch the eye more readily. Third: Combinations which attain in specialization of sense to the position of full compounds or which are used in various senses, or have a long history, and thus require to be dealt with more at large. These are often enumerated (in SMALL CAPTIALS) at the end of the main article, and thence referred to their alphabetical place, where they are treated in all respects as main words.
All compounds and combinations of interest or importance will thus be found either in their alphabetical order, or under the word which constitutes their first element. But phrases are treated under their leading word, as on account of, under ACCOUNT; and specific names, like sea anemone, black alder, under their generic names ANEMONE, ALDER, etc. Sea anemone is considered (linguistically) as a kind of anemone, but Adams's needle not as a kind of needle, nor mouse-ear as a kind of ear.
This term is used for any word which has been formed by the addition of a suffix to a main word also treated in this Dictionary (also, more rarely, by the alteration or removal of the suffix of a main word). Derivatives may be regarded as occupying a half-way position between, on the one hand, combinations (arising out of syntactical relationships between words determined chiefly by their semantic reference) and, on the other, inflected forms (whose existence and form, with the exception in English of a limited set of irregular inflexions, are predetermined by the system of grammar). In other words, a very considerable number of the derivatives recorded are predictable and transparent: as, for example, the many adverbs formed by the addition of -ly from adjectives, the similarly derived abstract nouns in -ness, and the agent-nouns in -er, most of which are thrown up by syntactic transformations. So ‘he is insufficiently motivated’, ‘a fashioner of sonnets’, ‘the coolness of our reception’ are closely linked with ‘his motivation is insufficient’, ‘to fashion sonnets’, ‘we had a cool reception’. On the very borderline with the inflexional system lie the verbal substantives and participial adjectives, ending in -ing and -ed, which are indistinguishable in form, and often in function also, from the corresponding gerunds and participles. At the other end of the scale there are small groups of derivatives incorporating uncommon suffixes, which have emerged or have been coined in much the same way as combinations (with which, indeed, they may be interchangeable). At the extreme, we find slang and journalistic formations such as those ending in -ville (Squaresville) or -aholic (workaholic), which resemble combinations in their raison d'être.
The necessity for the separate treatment of those derivatives which are actually homomorphic with regular inflected forms, such as the verbal substantives and participial adjectives, or whose incidence is so regular and natural as to amount almost to the status of inflexion, such as the adverbs formed with -ly or agent-nouns in -er, might almost be denied, on the grounds that the senses of the derivative are deducible from those of the parent word. But in fact the occurrence of even the obviously formed derivatives, and the relationships of their senses with the root words, is very often unpredictable and complex; and the suffixes by which they are formed cannot be tidily separated into two groups, according to whether their application is transparent and regular or not. It is, therefore, the practice of the Dictionary to register every recorded derivative, and to accord it such treatment as its own meaning and use necessitate. The majority of derivatives entered in the Dictionary will be found as main words in their own right, but linked through the cross-references employed in their etymologies, and frequently also in their definitions, to the main words on which they are formed.
Derivatives which are of infrequent occurrence, or which have only one sense, or only a few senses straightforwardly related to those of the root word, are usually treated in a separate paragraph at the end of the article for the parent word. They are printed in the same small, dark bold type as combinations, and are usually introduced by ‘Hence’ (signifying formation on, and chronological succession to, the root word), ‘So’ (implying derivation but not posteriority), or ‘Also’ (occasionally used to connect parallel derivatives when no parent word has been traced). This arrangement has the great merit that whatever information about the pronunciation, variations in form, and etymology is common to the derivative and its parent word need not be repeated. Further conciseness is sometimes achieved by the appending of derivatives at the end of the definition of the root word in an article that only has one sense-division. From time to time, a derivative that has arisen in only one sense of a complex main word is treated under that sense-division.
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