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annotation

UK/ˌæn.əˈteɪ.ʃən/US/ˌæn.əˈteɪ.ʃən/
nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — annotate sits at #14,332mostly written

Other forms: annotations

An annotation is a note added to a text to explain or comment on it. Marginal annotations, an annotated edition, add an annotation.

In scholarship the annotations are often worth more than the text, since they carry the argument. In machine learning, annotation is the human labelling of data, and it is the slow expensive part of the work.

Definitions of annotation

  1. 1nounannotationA note added to a text to explain or comment on it.C1

    “The student's copy of Hamlet was full of annotations in the margins.”

annotation is a note.

Where it comes from

Latin annotatio comes from annotare, to note down, from ad plus nota, a mark.

  1. Latin

    annotātiōnem

  2. English, today

    annotation

Built from

  • annotātiō · Latin — remark, annotation
  • annotō · Latin — note down, remark

From Latin annotātiōnem, accusative singular of annotātiō (“remark, annotation”), from annotātus, perfect passive participle of annotō (“note down, remark”). Equivalent to annotate + ion.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Academic English

Practise this word

annotation in the wild

  • Experts in the field have differing views about the annotation of a corpus.

    Corpus linguistics

  • Typically called just ruby or rubi, such annotations are most commonly used as pronunciation guides for characters that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader.

    Ruby character

  • Web annotation can refer to online annotations of web resources such as web pages or parts of them, or a set of W3C standards developed for this purpose.

    Web annotation

  • An annotation is extra information associated with a particular point in a document or other piece of information.

    Annotation

  • For annotations of different digital media, see web annotation and text annotation.

    Annotation

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • annotate