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r ?/ BOS TON PUBLK: LIBRAF TY | M llll llll llll ] IIIII 3 999! 3 044 88 3 96 3 CD-ROM dictionary and thesaurus in one CAMBRIDGE CAMBRIDGE Academic Content Dictionary e «r Af tbit, ^ CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 1001 3-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521691963 © Cambridge University Press 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. Defined words that we have a reason to believe constitute trademarks have been labeled as such. However, neither the presence nor absence of such labels should be regarded as affecting the legal status of any trademark. First edition 2009 Printed in the United States of America A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cambridge acaJemyc u p . cm. P ISBN 978-0-#-ln"-?(hFrdback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-521-69196-3 (pbk. with cd-rom : alk. paper) 1. English language —-D fi)înânuat^t^VÂio^fel|a/pbsaubiualarryy.. I. Cambridge University Press. II. Title: Academic content dictionary. V ” PE1628.C2211 s 2008 I >11 an tin 1 V>\ ywdO art* t 423 — do ***5**1 2007049860 ISBN 978-0-521-69196-3 paperback with CD-ROM (Windows, Mac) ISBN 978-0-521-87143-3 hardback Editorial and production team COMMISSIONING EDITOR CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM Stephen F. Perkins, dataformat.com Paul Heacock MANAGING EDITOR DESIGN AND COMPOSITION Carol-June V. Cassidy Jane Tenenbaum, Tenenbaum Design Chris Cott, Grapevine Publishing Services LLC SENIOR EDITORS Daniel Grossberg, Grapevine John K. Bollard, Ph.D. Publishing Services LLC Julie Plier SOFTWARE SUPPORT LEXICOGRAPHERS Dominic Glennon Grant Barrett Orin Hargraves CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL CORPUS PRONUNCIATIONS Ann Fiddes, Corpus Manager Julie Sontag, Corpus Administrator John K. Bollard, Ph.D. Robert Fairchild, Systems Developer EDITORIAL REVIEW SMARTTHESAURUS CODING (CD-ROM) Sylvia P. Bloch Mary Coe, Potomac Indexing Allene Feldman John K. Bollard, Ph.D. PROOFREADERS DATABASE DEVELOPMENT Katherine M. Isaacs Walter Friedman Linda M. LiDestri Tyler Cassidy-Heacock f : C/ . ILLUSTRATIONS Vilma Ortiz-Dillon Steve Cancel Based on the Cambridge Dictionary of American English, Second Edition Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 4 • https://archive.org/details/cambridgeacademiOOcamb Contents Preface vii Academic content ix Finding your way around the dictionary x Usage labels xiv Grammar codes xvi Parts of speech xvii Pronunciation symbols xviii A - Z 1-1114 Reference pages 1115 Geographic names 1116 Irregular verbs 1121 Prefixes 1126 Suffixes 1127 Punctuation 1128 Literary terms 1130 The planets 1131 Mohs scale of mineral hardness 1131 Geologic time 1132 Periodic table of the elements 1133 Biological classification of organisms 1134 Math and science symbols 1134 SI units 1135 Weights and measures 1136 v ' Preface M astering school subjects is hard work. Understanding the Fundamental Counting Principle or knowing what a polis was or what a nuclease does are not things that just happen - acquiring this knowledge requires effort. One tool for acquiring and retaining knowledge is a good dictionary, which will explain all the important words and phrases used in school subjects. The Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary does that, and more. This book includes the important vocabulary for twenty different content areas, from al- gebra to world history. The subject vocabulary defined in this book is taken from state standards and standardized tests. We have also included vocabulary from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) subject area assessments. In addition, the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary includes the words from the Aca- demic Word List: 570 words and their derivatives, or word families, that are used frequently in academic texts. Words in the Academic Word List - like authority, method, and significant - are not specific to one subject; they are used across many different subject areas. (See page ix for a full list of the content areas covered in this dictionary and more information about the Aca- demic Word List.) You should not have to work hard to understand the explanations given in a dictionary. That is why the definitions in the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary are written using the Cambridge Defining Vocabulary, a list of about 2,500 very common words that students already know. The Cambridge Defining Vocabulary was developed using the American English portions of the Cambridge International Corpus, a database of more than 1 billion words of written and spoken English. The corpus was also used to help editors decide which words and phrases to include in the dictionary, which meanings to define, and what examples should be included. This means that the entries in this dictionary show how English is really used by writers and speakers of American and Canadian English today. There are many more features in the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary that you will find helpful, especially in your writing. The following pages - Finding your way around the dictionary - describe how to use them. We hope you will agree that they make this the most useful dictionary available for students, one that will prepare you for success in high school and beyond. Paul Heacock Commissioning Editor August 2008 VII