Following is a list of strings that have been selected from
the full search results. Each of the selected strings
is thought to be of particular significance to
alt.usage.english. The number following each string is
the number of occurrences found for that string. The
colon is only a delimiter for this list and not part of
the string.
I've shown expansions for abbreviations only where I'm
reasonably confident I know what the abbreviation stands
for. I've left the expansion field blank in cases where
the abbreviations looks as if it should stand for a
reference, but I don't know what reference. A question
mark indicates that I'm guessing more than usual.
I've put asterisks in front of the initialisms that I prefer, for what that is worth.
Click here for an explanation of the search criteria used
in generating this list.
Click here to see the full unedited list of search results.
ACD: 63 American College Dictionary ?
AE: 294
AEU: 250 alt.english.usage (newsgroup)
AF: 656
AFU: 236 alt.folklore.urban (newsgroup)
AH: 142 American Heritage
AH3: 39 American Heritage Third (edition)
AH4: 21 American Heritage Fourth (edition)
AHD: 1215 American Heritage Dictionary
*AHD1: 96 American Heritage Dictionary First (edition)
*AHD2: 83 American Heritage Dictionary Second (edition)
*AHD3: 1451 American Heritage Dictionary Third (edition)
*AHD4: 174 American Heritage Dictionary Fourth (edition)
AI: 145 Artificial Intelligence ?
AIPA: 47 ASCII IPA
AN: 156
AS: 305 Anglo Saxon
ASCII: 2287 American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
*ASCII IPA: 2644 ASCII International Phonetic Alphabet
ASCII-IPA: 156 ASCII International Phonetic Alphabet
ASCII/IPA: 23 ASCII International Phonetic Alphabet
ASL: 228 American Sign Language ?
*AUE: 8938 alt.usage.english (newsgroup)
*AmE: 953 American English
AusE: 37 Australian English ?
BE: 332 British English ?
*BrE: 964 British English
CED: 59
*CEEL: 17 Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language
*CEL: 26 Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
CGEL: 15
*CIC: 90 "Caught is cot"
*CINC: 119 "Caught is not cot"
*CMS: 59 Chicago Manual of Style
COBUILD: 55 (Collins) Cobuild (dictionary)
COD: 658 Concise Oxford Dictionary
COD/9: 21 Concise Oxford Dictionary Ninth (edition)
*COD10: 51 Concise Oxford Dictionary Tenth (edition)
*COD4: 14 Concise Oxford Dictionary Fourth (edition)
*COD5: 18 Concise Oxford Dictionary Fifth (edition)
*COD6: 25 Concise Oxford Dictionary Sixth (edition)
*COD7: 77 Concise Oxford Dictionary Seventh (edition)
*COD8: 222 Concise Oxford Dictionary Eighth (edition)
*COD9: 732 Concise Oxford Dictionary Ninth (edition)
COE: 13
COED: 86
COED9: 49
*CdnOD: 42 Canadian Oxford Dictionary
*ChD/93: 16 Chambers Dictionary 1993 (edition)
ChD93: 13 Chambers Dictionary 1993 (edition)
Chambers/93: 63 Chambers Dictionary 1993 (edition)
DAE: 23
*FAQ: 12695 Frequently Asked Questions (document)
IE: 443 Internet Explorer? Indo-European?
*IE4: 38 Internet Explorer (version) 4
*IE5: 37 Internet Explorer (version) 5
*IPA: 3003 International Phonetic Alphabet
*ISBN: 2938 International Standard Book Number
*IrE: 12 Irish English
*KJV: 350 King James Version (bible)
M-W: 876 Merriam-Webster
M-W3: 20 (Same as W3NID?)
ME: 920 Middle English? Modern English?
MEU: 190 (Fowler's Dictionary of) Modern English Usage
*MEU1: 24 (Fowler's Dictionary of) Modern English Usage
*MEU2: 179 (Gowers' revision of Fowler's Dictionary of)
Modern English Usage
*MEU3: 245 (Burchfield's New Fowler's) Modern English Usage
Third (edition)
MEUII: 11 (Gowers' revision of Fowler's Dictionary of)
Modern English Usage
MSIE: 54 Microsoft Internet Explorer
MW: 946 Merriam Webster
MW10: 53
MW10CD: 17 Merriam-Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary
MW9NCD: 63 Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
MWC: 14 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate (dictionary) ?
MWC10: 35 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate (dictionary)
Tenth (edition)
MWCD: 373 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
*MWCD10: 2567 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Tenth (edition)
*MWDEU: 226 Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
Mini-FAQ: 474 (Another name for an Intro Document)
MnE: 15 Modern English ?
MoE: 24 Modern English ?
ModE: 15 Modern English
NG: 2377 Newsgroup
*NODE: 488 New Oxford Dictionary of English
NSOED: 1024 New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
*NSOED/93: 738 New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 1993 (edition)
NSOED93: 105 New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 1993 (edition)
OADCE: 24
OALD: 55
OBAUE: 36 Obligatory (comment to be on topic for) alt.usage.english
OCD: 28
*OCEL: 97 Oxford Companions to the English Language
ODOQ: 22 Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
*ODQ: 64 Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
*OE: 1064 Old English
OED: 7469 Oxford English Dictionary
OED II: 23 Oxford English Dictionary Second (edition)
OED/28: 29 Oxford English Dictionary 1928 (edition)
*OED1: 139 Oxford English Dictionary First (edition)
*OED2: 1142 Oxford English Dictionary Second (edition)
OED3: 36 Oxford English Dictionary Third (edition) ?
OED4: 19 Oxford English Dictionary Fourth (edition) ?
*OEDSupp/87: 14 1987 Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary
OF: 313 Old French ?
OG: 57 Old German ?
OHG: 96 Old High German
ON: 448 Old Norse
OZ: 75 (Australia)
*ObAUE: 392 Obligatory (comment to be on topic for) alt.usage.english
*PDNTC: 21 Predicate-Dual Nominative-Transfer Case (form)
*PIE: 203 Proto-Indo-European
POED: 20
PhilipE: 69 Philippine English ?
RH: 133 Random House
RH2: 16 Random House Second (edition)
RHD: 39 Random House Dictionary
RHD2: 37 Random House Dictionary Second (edition)
RHDEL: 38 Random House Dictionary (of the) English Language
*RHDEL2: 170 Random House Dictionary (of the) English Language
Second (edition)
RHDEL2/87: 16 Random House Dictionary (of the) English Language
Second (edition) (1987 version)
*RHHDAS: 132 Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang
RHU: 38 Random House Unabridged (dictionary)
*RHU1: 55 Random House Unabridged (dictionary) First (edition)
RHU2: 51 Random House Unabridged (dictionary) Second (edition)
RHUD: 103 Random House Unabridged Dictionary
RHUD2: 418 Random House Unabridged Dictionary Second (edition)
RHUD2/87: 18 Random House Unabridged Dictionary Second (edition)
1987 version
RHW: 21 Random House Webster's (dictionary)
*RHWCD: 95 Random House Webster's College Dictionary
*RHWCD2: 54 Random House Webster's College Dictionary
Second (edition)
RHWUD: 91 Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
*RHWUED: 76 Random House Webster's Unabridged English Dictionary
SE: 240
SF: 2418 Science fiction ?
SOD: 37 Shorter Oxford Dictionary ?
SOED: 217 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
SOED3: 146 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Third (edition)
*UK: 23196 United Kingdom
*US: 33396 United States
*USA: 16402 United States (of) America
USofA: 1035 United States of America (in Pogospeak)
*W2: 184 Webster's (New International Dictionary) Second (edition)
*W3: 208 Webster's (Third) New International Dictionary
W3C: 34
W3NI: 126 Webster's Third New International (dictionary)
*W3NID: 245 Webster's Third New International Dictionary
*W7NCD: 11 Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
*W95: 18 (Microsoft) Windows 95
*W98: 25 (Microsoft) Windows 98
*W9NCD: 179 Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
WC: 85 Webster's Collegiate (dictionary) ?
WCD: 11 Webster's Collegiate Dictionary ?
WCD10: 18 (Merriam-) Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Tenth (edition)
WD: 18 Webster Dictionary ?
*WDEU: 149 Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
WN20CD: 23
WNCD: 24 Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
WNI2: 21 Webster's New International (dictionary) Second (edition)
WNI3: 13 Webster's New International (dictionary) Third (edition)
WNID: 45 Webster's New International Dictionary
*WNID2: 43 Webster's New International Dictionary Second (edition)
*WNID3: 12 Webster's New International Dictionary Third (edition)
*WNWCD: 15 Webster's New World College Dictionary
WNWCollege2: 13 Webster's New World College (dictionary) Second (edition)
WNWD: 28 Webster's New World Dictionary
WTNID: 38 Webster's Third New International Dictionary
The following four lines contain Perl regular expressions.
File-selection string is "^aue\d\d\d\d.txt$"
$match_pattern is "[A-Z][0-9A-Za-z\/-]*[0-9A-Z\/-]+"
Search string is "/(^|\s|_|\[|\()(($match_pattern )*$match_pattern)[\s_\?\.\]\),]/g"
Selected abbreviation is "$2", which corresponds to "(($match_pattern )*$match_pattern)"
The file-selection string accepts any file name that starts with
beginning-of-line, followed by "aue", followed by any four
numeric characters followed by ".txt", followed by end-of-line. This means that with the database that was searched, one file was
processed for each month starting with February 1996 ("aue9602.txt")
and ending with January 2001 ("aue0101.txt").
$match_pattern will accept strings meeting the following criteria:
First character uppercase alpha, followed by
Zero or more characters that can be a numeral, uppercase
alpha, lowercase alpha, slash, or hyphen; followed by
One or more characters that can be a numeral, uppercase
alpha, slash, or hyphen
The search string will accept:
Beginning of line, white-space character, underscore,
left square bracket, or left paren, followed by
Zero or more occurrences of $match_pattern followed by a
space, followed by
One occurrence of $match_pattern, followed by
A character that is white space, question mark, period,
right square bracket, right paren, or comma