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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.
The capital and largest city of Lithuania, in the southeast part of the country. Founded in 1323, Vilnius developed into a center of Jewish learning in the 1700s and 1800s. The city was occupied by Soviet troops in 1939, becoming the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1940. After a period of occupation by Germany (1941-1944) during which most of the city's Jewish community was exterminated, Vilnius reverted to Soviet rule, eventually becoming the capital of independent Lithuania (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.