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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 country of southeast Africa. Center of the widespread Malawi kingdom from the 1400s to the late 1700s, the region became a British protectorate in 1891 and was known as Nyasaland from 1907 until 1964. It joined Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) in a federation from 1953 to 1963 and became independent as Malawi in 1964. Lilongwe is the capital and Blantyre the largest city.
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.