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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 of California, in the north-central part of the state northeast of San Francisco. The city was founded as a mining camp on John Sutter's land (where gold was discovered in 1848) and became the state capital in 1854. It was named for the Sacramento River, which rises near Mount Shasta and flows about 610 km (380 mi) southward through the fertile Sacramento Valley to an extension of San Francisco Bay.
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.