Entries are arranged in the Dictionary in the alphabetical order of their headwords. Alphabetization is based strictly upon the twenty-six letters of the standard English alphabet. An initial capital letter is treated as in no way distinct from a small one. The spacing within a headword consisting of two or more written words is disregarded. Hence, for example, the sequence of headwords all-rounder, All Saints, allseed, All Souls, allspice.
In a similar way, all characters and symbols that are not among the twenty-six letters are either disregarded, or treated like the alphabetical letters or combinations to which they are most nearly equivalent. Apostrophes, full points, hyphens, and spaces occurring anywhere within the headword are disregarded: hence, for the sake of ordering, p'an is equivalent to pan, met. to met, and co-op to coop. Diacritical accents are also ignored: so cañon is equivalent to canon, korin to kZrin. The ligatures æ and œ, naturally enough, are alphabetized as if written as ae and oe, ø as simple o; ‘thorn’ (þ) and ‘edh’ (ð) are treated as equivalent to th; and ‘yogh’ (Š) as equivalent to gh.
Pairs of parentheses, enclosing optional letters, are ignored. A single opening parenthesis, marking off the last letter or letters of a word, functions in a way that is counter to the general rule: the letters following the opening parenthesis are disregarded for the purpose of ordering. So anachoret(e precedes anachoretal. The most typical function of this convention is to mark off a final silent -e that has little historical significance.
Headwords with the same spelling (homographs), including those rendered equivalent by the conventions just described, are normally ordered according to grammatical category. Prefixes and suffixes are labelled as such and treated as separate grammatical categories. Combining forms, though lacking a special label, are similarly treated. Variant and obsolete forms (subordinate words), and written or spoken abbreviations entered as main words, have likewise no special label, but are commonly treated as members of separate grammatical categories.
There is no absolutely fixed order in which grammatical categories are arranged. All other things being equal, the major grammatical categories of noun (substantive in the Dictionary's terminology), adjective, verb, and adverb, precede, in that order, the minor ones; but the ordering very frequently departs from this general principle, especially where a group of etymologically related homographs is arranged in an order that reflects the historical development.
Identically spelt headwords that also belong to the same grammatical category are distinguished by following superior numbers (‘homonym numbers’) and are usually arranged in the order of their earliest occurrence. Entries that are not explicitly labelled with a part of speech, but are treated as distinct grammatical categories (such as variant forms and abbreviations), are distinguished by superior numbering from others of the same kind, and not necessarily from unlabelled entries of other kinds.
Eight kinds of serial symbol are employed to mark the sense-divisions of an entry, and less commonly, to classify the written variants of the headword, and each is, generally speaking, identified with particular functions. At the highest level, bold capital letters (A, B, C, etc.) divide into sections an entry treating a word that is used in more than one grammatical relation. The main senses of a word are identified by bold arabic numerals (1, 2, 3). Important subdivisions of these, reflecting either semantic, grammatical, or phraseological extensions of the sense, are identified by bold small letters (a, b, c). Italic letters within parentheses (a), (b), (c), are employed either to subdivide the last level of sense-distinction still more finely, or to categorize the senses of combinations, derivatives, and phrases. Very occasionally it is necessary to subdivide a definition introduced by an italic letter, and then lower-case roman numerals in parentheses (i), (ii), (iii), are introduced.
The main sense-divisions, and any subdivisions they may have, proceed in a single sequence within the entry, or one grammatical section of it; so the appearance of B will start a new sequence 1, 2, 3 or a, b, c. But senses which have developed along several different and parallel branches are arranged into groups headed by bold capital roman numerals (I, II, III) and these do not interrupt the numerical sequence of the main sense-divisions. If a lower level of branching needs to be recognized (in the arrangement of a particularly large and complicated word, for example), an increasing series of asterisks (*, **, ***) is used. These sometimes also occur as a means of grouping the uses of phrasal verbs.
Greek letters (α, β, γ) are used primarily to classify variant forms at the head of an entry. Sometimes the illustrative quotations are grouped according to the variant forms they illustrate, and in this case each group of quotations is introduced by the corresponding Greek letter. Certain words with an exceptionally complicated form-history are divided into sections, of which the first, headed A, illustrates the forms. This section has the usual framework, but with the numeral and lower-case roman letter sequences indicating the major and minor grammatical divisions and the Greek letters indicating the main form-variations within each of them. If the word also has more than one grammatical relation, the signification (headed B) is divided into sections, headed (the capital letter series having already been appropriated) by bold capital roman numerals, each containing separate series of main senses introduced by arabic numerals.
The pronunciation is the actual living form or forms of a word, that is, the word itself, of which the current spelling is only a symbolization - generally, indeed, only the traditionally-preserved symbolization of an earlier form, sometimes imperfect to begin with, still oftener corrupted in its passage to our time. This living form is the latest fact in the form-history of the word, the starting-point of all investigations into its previous history, the only fact in its form-history to which the lexicographer can personally witness. For all his statements as to its previous history are only reproductions of the evidence of former witnesses, or deductions drawn from earlier modes of symbolizing the forms of the word then current, checked and regulated by the ascertained laws and principles of phonology. To register the current pronunciation is therefore essential, in a dictionary which deals with the language on historical principles. It would be manifestly absurd, for example, to trace the form-history of the first numeral from the Old Germanic ain , through the Old English án, to the Middle English oan, on, oon, one, and to stop short at the last of these, without recognizing the modern English (w
n), which represents a greater change within the last three and a half centuries than had previously taken place in 1500 years. The fact that the written history, as embodied in the spelling, accidentally stops short at the Middle English one, makes it all the more necessary to give the modern history and current form of the living word, since of these no hint is otherwise conveyed.
The system of transcription employed in this edition is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It follows, in the main, the principles for transcribing English pronunciation used in other Oxford Dictionaries. The minor differences in style have been adopted in order to accommodate the phonetic representation of unassimilated foreign words, dialect and regional forms, and the reconstructed pronunciation of earlier English.
A list of the symbols employed in the transcription is provided in the Key to the Pronunciation.
The following features deserve special notice:
Consonants. The breathed (voiceless) pronunciation of the combination wh, used by many speaker of English, is represented by (hw). The possibility that ‘linking r’ may occur at the end of a word in which a final r is written, when the following word begins with a vowel-sound, is symbolized by ((r)), e.g. her (h
(r)). Parentheses around other consonants, for example (j>) in words like suit, (p) in words like impromptu, or (t) in words like bench, indicate that the enclosed sounds may or may not be heard in the context. A hyphen is used between (t) and (
) belonging to separate word elements (e.g. in courtship) in contradistinction to the affricative group (t) that is usually written ch. Double consonants are shown by the doubling of the symbol.
Vowels and Diphthongs. The symbolization of the vowels of the principal foreign languages cited generally corresponds to the system of so-called ‘cardinal vowels’. English ‘short e’ (as in bet) is treated as approximately equivalent to cardinal no. 3, and therefore symbolized by (
). Following the first edition, the long open vowel (
) (as in border) is distinguished from the centring diphthong (
) (as in boarder) which is of a different origin but has become identical with it in most varieties of southern British pronunciation. Length (symbolized by () is shown in English words, in accordance with general present-day custom, even though most ‘long’ and ‘short’ vowels are identified and distinguished more by their place of articulation than by their duration, which varies in accordance with context. The distinction observed in this Dictionary between the ‘long’ close vowels (i) and (u) and the ‘short’ open vowels (
) and (
) in syllables with low stress should be understood in the light of this. Length is marked in words from foreign languages in which this is conventional. It is occasionally marked in French words (in which it is not strictly necessary) when these are felt to have become somewhat Anglicized. Nasalization is shown by the tilde (˜).
Parenthesized ‘schwa’ () preceding the consonants (l), (m), or (n) indicates that these are, or may be pronounced as, syllabic consonants. Parentheses around any other vowel symbol indicate that it may or may not be heard in that context.
Alternative pronunciations. Alternative pronunciations for a word are listed, set off by commas, and where necessary labelled. Parallels (
) indicate the non-naturalized pronunciation of the word. Older pronunciations are sometimes distinguished by ‘formerly’; but no exhaustive analysis of the currency, frequency, or distribution of alternative pronunciations is implied by their ordering. An alternative pronunciation may be indicated simply by a transcription of that part of the word which is phonetically different, indicated by leading or following hyphens. The existence of a variant pronunciation with (æ) in many words which contain a (pronounced 
) is indicated by adding -æ- (or æ-) after the main transcription. The (now fairly rare) variant pronunciation of o (usually 
) as () is indicated by a parallel convention.
Stress. The main stress is shown by a superior stress mark (') preceding the stressed syllable. Secondary stress is shown by an inferior stress mark (%). Syllables can begin with a vowel, a single consonant, or as large a consonant group as would be articulable at the beginning of a word, but in certain words speakers actually make a syllable-division at a later point. Where stress is marked in ordinary graphic forms, the same general principles are observed, with certain allowances for English spelling. Any consonant combinations that make up only a single sound are treated as unbreakable (so o'ccur, para'psychic but ac'cede, resig'nation); single letters symbolizing consonant combinations are perforce unbreakable (so e'xistence). Sometimes the function of the stress-mark is to show that a word is a disyllable rather than the monosyllable it might otherwise appear to be, e.g. higher ('ha(r)) but hire (ha(r)); 'creat but treat.
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