SELECTION OF AUDIO PRONUNCIATIONS

An audio pronunciation has been provided for every boldface entry word in the dictionary which in the text has a pronunciation respelling between reverse virgules; this includes inflected forms and run-on words and phrases. Boldface forms that are not followed by a pronunciation respelling in the text are not given an audio pronunciation: the respelling and audio for such forms can generally be found at a preceding entry or at the cross-reference indicated in the defining text.

Words that have two or more variant pronunciations in the text are usually provided with at least two audio pronunciations, especially when the difference between the variants occurs in a stressed syllable or when a usage question arises with one of the pronunciation variants. For reasons of space, the number of audio pronunciation variants was limited to those that would be of the greatest use and interest to most readers of the dictionary. For this reason, foreign names are often given an audio pronunciation for the less familiar non-anglicized variant only. Variants without audio pronunciations (and especially dialectal variants) should not be considered less standard or preferable than variants with audio pronunciations.

When the difference between two pronunciation variants shown in the text is relatively minor, the more deliberate or dialectally conservative variant is generally the only one that has an audio pronunciation, regardless of whether it is the first variant shown in the respelling. This generalization applies especially to variants which differ only in the vowels \ä\ and \o\ (as in launch); in the phoneme combinations \ar\ and \er\ (as in air), \Or\ and \or\ (as in board), \hw\ and \w\ (as in white), \hy\ and \y\ (as in humor), \&r\ and \&-r\ (as in burro); or in the presence or absence of an unstressed \^&\ (as in reckoning) or a parenthesized \y\ (as in dudish).

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