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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 desert region and ancient kingdom in the Nile River valley of southern Egypt and northern Sudan. After the 20th century BC it was controlled by the rulers of Egypt, although in the 8th and 7th centuries an independent kingdom arose that conquered Egypt and ruled as the XXV Dynasty (c. 715-663). Converted to Christianity in the 6th century AD, Nubia united with Ethiopia but fell to the Muslims in the 14th century. Much of the region was flooded by the completion of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s.
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.