| ~ | approximately | ~grade 8 means approximately grade 8
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| abbr | abbreviation |
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| acr | acronym | a sayable kind of abbreviation like NATO and radar, but not BBC, bfd, or D.C.
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| adj | adjective | modifies (describes or limits) noun and pronouns (and gerunds - the -ing words ‘he escaped by swimming rapidly’)
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| adv | adverb | how? when? where? why? of a verb (ran quickly), adjective (very green), or adverb (quite honestly). (slowly, quickly, ill, well, very, too), adj + ly = adv (e.g. rare, honest; rarely, honestly)
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| alt | alternative | alternative with equal distribution
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| ant | antonym |
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| arch | archaic | used to indicate ancient words still used
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| Aus | Australian |
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| bsl | backslang | `boy' becomes `yob'
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| cf | compare | L. confer
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| col | colloquial | informal conversation
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| conj | conjunction | connectors: and, or, but, neither, nor, for, when
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| contr | contraction |
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| crsl | Cockney rsl. |
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| csl | Cockney slang |
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| dated | dated | refers to a defunct term, though still pops up in books, movies, and in jokes, etc.
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| derog | derogatory | intentionally offensive
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| dial | dialect |
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| echoic | echoic | word sounds like what it means (yada yada, poo poo), but not necessarily onomatopoeic
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| esp | especially |
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| euph | euphemism |
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| excl | exclamation |
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| expr | expression | a string of elements analyzed as a unit, such as a sentence, or an idiom
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| GB | Great Britain |
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| gesture | gesture |
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| Hindi | Hindi | spoken mainly in N. Central India, or its dialect Hindustani, influenced by Persian and spoken also in Pakistan
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| idiom | idiom | fixed or frozen expression (‘kick the bucket’ = die). Idioms are not indicated in this dictionary, but are lumped into the more general ‘expr.’
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| imp | imperative |
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| inf | informal |
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| intj | interjection | greeting, response, or exclamation, which may be followed by !
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| Ir | Irish |
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| joc | jocular | indicates word used mostly for its humorous effect
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| L | Latin |
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| low | low | substandard usage
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| n | noun | word naming person, place, thing, quality, action, path, measurement in space or time, question, category, event, abstract concept, or no meaning
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| N | Northern |
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| num | number |
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| obs | obsolete | used to indicate a word no longer used
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| obsc | obscene |
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| offen | offensive | see derog. above
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| orig | original(ly) |
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| pl | plural |
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| pp | past participle |
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| pr | pronuncation |
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| prefix | prefix |
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| prep | preposition | What the rabbit does in relation to the table (the rabbit jumps on, between, because of, to, by, before, around, with, under, in back of, beneath, below, above, the table)
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| pron | pronoun | I, me, my, mine, myself; they, you, him, her, it, this, these; who, whose, whom; which, that, one, ones, one's; everybody, anyone
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| punc | punctuation |
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| qv | which see | L. quod vide, in cross reference
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| regional | regional | word used only in some region, not nationally
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| rsl | rhyming slang |
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| Scot | Scottish |
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| sl | slang |
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| sp | spelling |
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| suff | suffix |
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| symbol | symbol | ε| # $ % ¢ d p £ s in various combinations
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| syn | synonym | or, synonymous with
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| trad | traditional |
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| UK | United Kingdom | England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
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| US | United States | in full, United States of America
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| usage | usage | indicates grammatical usage and usage frequency
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| usu | usually |
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| v | verb | word expressing action, being or occurrence
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| var | variant | prefixed to word markedly less common
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| vi | verb intransitive | does not take object, "The delegates met", "Shirley reads"
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| viz | L videlicet | namely, in other words
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| vt | verb transitive | requires object, "he met his fate", "Shirley reads poetry"
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| vulg | vulgar
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