annotation

/ˌænəˈteɪʃn/ (bre, ipa) · /ˌænəˈteɪʃn/ (ame, ipa) · /ˌa-nə-ˈtā-shən/ (ame, mw)

annotation — noun

1. a brief comment, explanation, or reference written next to or attached to part o

1.名詞C1
釋義

a brief comment, explanation, or reference written next to or attached to part of a book, document, diagram, or image, usually meant to help readers understand a difficult passage or to record what someone thinks about it.

例句

Professor Liu's annotations in the margins explained every Latin phrase for her students.

annotations in the margins (typical location)

The old Bible was full of handwritten annotations from three generations of the Cohen family.

handwritten annotations from + source

同義詞
  • note

    much broader and less formal; an annotation is specifically tied to another text

  • comment

    any spoken or written remark; an annotation is always written and attached to source material

  • gloss

    scholarly synonym, especially for explaining a single word in an old or foreign-language text

  • footnote

    specifically printed at the bottom of the page; annotation can sit anywhere

文法句型

annotation on/to + noun

annotations in + text

用法筆記

Most often plural ('annotations'). The container is named with 'in' (in the margins, in the text) but the topic is named with 'on' (annotations on the poem). Distinguish from sense 2: this sense is the visible note itself; sense 2 is the activity of producing such notes.

常見錯誤

❌I made an annotation about the chapter on page 12.
✅I made an annotation on page 12 about the chapter.
💡use 'on/in' for where the note sits, 'about' for what it discusses.
❌The book has many annotation.
✅The book has many annotations.
💡countable; use the plural with 'many'.

2. the activity or process of adding short explanations, labels, or tags to a text,

2.名詞C1
釋義

the activity or process of adding short explanations, labels, or tags to a text, image, or set of data — for instance, marking each word in a sentence with its grammatical role, or labeling objects in a photograph for a computer to learn from.

例句

Manual annotation of the medical scans took the research team almost six months.

uncountable: annotation of + noun

The company hires linguists for the annotation of training data used in language models.

annotation of training data (data-science use)

同義詞
  • labelling

    common in machine-learning contexts; emphasizes attaching a category to each item

  • tagging

    lighter and more digital; suggests short keywords rather than full explanations

  • commentary

    fuller and more literary; the result is connected prose rather than separate notes

文法句型

annotation of + noun

annotation tools/software

用法筆記

Uncountable in this sense — say 'annotation is slow', not 'an annotation is slow'. Frequently appears as a compound modifier ('annotation tool', 'annotation task', 'annotation guidelines'). Distinguish from sense 1: if you can replace the word with 'note', use sense 1; if you can replace it with 'labelling' or 'tagging', use sense 2.

常見錯誤

❌The annotations of the dataset took a year.
✅The annotation of the dataset took a year.
💡when you mean the process, use the singular uncountable form.