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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 historical region and former duchy of Italy in present-day northeast Italy and Slovenia. Occupied by the Romans in the second century BC, it became a Lombard duchy in the sixth century AD and was conquered by various peoples and states before being ceded to Italy in 1866 (the western part) and 1919 (the eastern part). Eastern Friuli was awarded to Yugoslavia by treaty in 1947, passing to Slovenia upon Slovenia's independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
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.