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The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.
A delayed reaction to an unusual remark or circumstance after first either failing to notice anything unusual or reacting inappropriately, often performed as a comic device:"'Something's fishy,' Vidhu said again, with such a showboating shake of his head that I did a double take as I realized: he had some kind of inside scoop"(Katherine Russell Rich).
Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:
The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.