annotate

/ˈænəteɪt/ (bre, ipa) · /ˈænəteɪt/ (ame, ipa) · /ˈa-nə-ˌtāt/ (ame, mw)

annotate — verb

1. to write short notes beside a piece of writing or an image, usually to explain s

1.動詞及物C1
釋義

to write short notes beside a piece of writing or an image, usually to explain something difficult, give your opinion, or point out important parts.

例句

Professor Lin asked her students to annotate the poem before Friday's class.

annotate + noun (text)

Kofi annotated his chemistry textbook with colorful sticky notes and tiny drawings.

annotate + noun + with + noun

同義詞
  • gloss

    more formal and academic; usually means explaining individual words

  • comment on

    broader; can be spoken or written, no requirement to write beside the text

  • mark up

    informal; suggests editing marks rather than explanatory notes

文法句型

annotate + noun

annotate + noun + with + noun

用法筆記

Object is typically a written or visual work (poem, map, photograph, manuscript). Often passive when the focus is the result rather than who did the work, as in 'the document is annotated'.

常見錯誤

❌I annotated about the painting in my notebook.
✅I wrote notes about the painting in my notebook.
💡'annotate' takes a direct object (the thing receiving the notes), not 'about'.
❌She annotated me the difficult words.
✅She annotated the difficult words for me.
💡'annotate' does not take a person as indirect object.

2. in computing or research, to attach small labels or descriptions to items in a d

2.動詞及物C1
釋義

in computing or research, to attach small labels or descriptions to items in a dataset so software or people can recognize them — for example, marking each word in a sentence as a noun, verb, or place name.

例句

The team paid students to annotate thousands of dog photos for a new image-recognition app.

annotate + noun (data)

Linguists annotated each sentence with grammar labels before training the language model.

annotate + noun + with + noun (label set)

同義詞
  • label

    everyday equivalent; less technical-sounding

  • tag

    common in computing; usually for shorter or single-word labels

文法句型

annotate + noun

annotate + noun + with + noun

用法筆記

Distinguish from sense 1: this sense applies to structured data (datasets, audio clips, scans, sentences) and the labels follow a fixed system, not free comments. Common in machine-learning and linguistics contexts.

常見錯誤

❌They annotated the data with their thoughts about it.
✅They annotated the data with category labels.
💡sense 2 uses fixed labels, not personal opinions.