The Oxford 3000 dThe Oxford 3000 The keywords of the Oxford 3000 have been carefully selected by a group of language experts and experienced teachers as the words which should receive priority in vocabulary study because of their importance and usefulness The selection is based on three criteria The words which occur most frequentlyin English are included based on the information in the British National Corpus and the Oxford Corpus Collection Acorpus is an electronically held collection of written or spoken texts often consisting of hundreds of millions of words However being frequent in the corpus alone is not enough for a word to qualify as a keyword it may be that the word is used very frequently but only in a narrowly defined area such as newspapers or scientific articles In order to avoid including these restricted words we include as keywords only those words which are frequent across a rangeof different types of text In other words keywords are both frequent and used in a variety of contexts In addition the list includes some very important words which happen not to be used frequently even though they are very familiarto most users of English These include for example words for parts of the body words used in travel and words which are useful for explaining what you mean when you do not know the exact word for something These words were identified by consulting a panel of over seventy experts in the fields of teaching and language study The words of the Oxford 3000 are shown in the main section of the dictionary in larger print and with a key symbolimmediately following On the CD ROM the keywords are shown in red The most useful parts of the entries particular parts of speech meanings phrasal verbs and idioms are marked with a small key symbol The entries for keywords often have extra information in the form of more examples of use special notes explaining synonyms or related words or helpful illustrations This means that the keywords make an excellent starting point for expanding your vocabulary With most keywords there is far more to learn about them than the first meaning in the entry often these words have many meanings have a large family of words d derived from them or are used in a variety of patterns All of this means that each one of the keywords repays close study The list covers British and American English It is arranged to emphasize the connections between words so that words which are very closely related including adverbs ending in ly and opposites starting withun are grouped together Some basic phrases are also included Proper names names of people places etc beginning with a capital letter and numbers are not included in the main list Aseparate list of words which are important for language study but less important in everyday life follows the main list Knowing these words will help you to understand more of the informa tion given in the entries especially regarding the word s grammar and register whether it is for mal informal etc In order to make the definitions in this dictionary easy to understand we have written them using the keywords of the Oxford 3000 All words used in normal definition text are keywords or are on the list of language study terms Numbers and proper names are also used in definitions When it has been necessary to use aspecialist term which is not in the Oxford 3000 the word is shown in small capitals and in blue on the CD ROM If you do not know the meaning of this word look it up in the dictionary it will help you to understand the definition that you are interested in and will probably be a useful word to learn because it will be related to the original word you looked up The Oxford 3000 d advertisement also ad advert n advice n advise v affair n affect v affection n afford v afraid adj after prep conj adv afternoon n afterwards especiallyBrE NAmE usually afterward adv again adv against prep age n aged adj agency n agent n aggressive adj ago adv agree v agreement n ahead adv aid n v aim n v air n aircraft n airport n alarm n v alarming adj alarmed adj alcohol n alcoholic adj n alive adj all det pron adv allow v all right adj adv exclamation ally n v allied adj almost adv alone adj adv along prep adv alongside prep adv aloud adv alphabet n alphabetical adj alphabetically adv already adv also adv alter v alternative n adj alternatively adv although conj altogether adv always adv a m NAmE also A M abbr amaze v amazing adj amazed adj ambition n ambulance n among alsoamongst prep amount n v amuse v amusing adj amused adj a an indefinitearticle abandon v abandoned adj ability n able adj unable adj about adv prep above prep adv abroad adv absence n absent adj absolute adj absolutely adv absorb v abuse n v academic adj accent n accept v acceptable adj unacceptable adj access n accident n by accident accidental adj accidentally adv accommodation n accompany v according to prep account n v accurate adj accurately adv accuse v achieve v achievement n acid n acknowledge 。