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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 the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the western part of the country on the Congo River. Founded in 1881 by Henry M. Stanley, who named it Leopoldville after his patron, Leopold II of Belgium, it became capital of the Belgian Congo in 1926 and was the scene of the revolt in 1959 that led to Congo's independence a year later. In 1966 its name was changed to Kinshasa, after the name of an early village that occupied the site.
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.