One of the most valuable resources for a student or professional is the wide range of on-line and print trade publications, magazines, journals, and newspapers that are available in many fields and areas of study. Even if you only have a hobbyist’s interest in a certain topic – woodworking or botany, languages or music theory – reading about the research and discoveries made by others in that area will help you expand your own knowledge, perhaps filling in gaps you didn’t realize were there.

From the point of view of learning vocabulary, these publications are excellent references for review of topical words and phrases. When you read through an article, keep notes on vocabulary words you’re not familiar with so that you can look them up later. In some fields of study, the terminology will not change much over time; in others, new discoveries might add new words to the vocabulary every year.

A good source of information in nearly any area of research is the collection of research papers and thesis papers that are collected and stored at universities. Because these generally focus on a narrower area of study, you can often find specific information and vocabulary in these documents, and may be able to find papers that address the precise topic you’re interested in.

For a more general overview of a field or discipline, look for trade journals and newsletters. These will often be created and sponsored by professional organizations, but also by individuals with expertise and interest in the field. Here are a few you might find interesting:

• American Journal of Agricultural Economics
• Food & Drink Weekly
• Tattoo Artist Magazine
• Professional Photographer’s Association Magazine
• International Journal of Industrial Organization

You can use the knowledge you gain and the new words you learned in your own presentations, documentation, other professional correspondence; however, if you are using someone else’s research or study, remember to include citations and references to their work.

The answer? All of them. Over the past thirty years, educators and academicians have been researching the different ways that people learn – the “multiple intelligences” that all of us have in varying degrees. The results of that research (which has been, and will continue to be, further refined) are helping teachers and students worldwide find the best ways to give and get instruction for the fastest and most lasting learning. Which style of study you choose depends on how you, yourself learn best.

If your strength is linguistic (verbal), you’re already well-suited to work with words. Focus on reading and writing, and especially in using your words in conversation. Because you naturally pick up new words easily, make sure you complete your vocabulary study with the rest of the verbal “picture” by including word roots, definitions, synonyms, and antonyms.

If your strength is logical (mathematical), you’ll find that vocabulary study will be made easier if you focus on the connections between words. Your mind automatically tries to fit things into patterns and categories, so use that strength to group vocabulary words, and think about the ways that you can classify words. What words have similar meanings? What words share the same roots? Which nouns can be made into adjectives? You might find that you learn more quickly by using fill-in-the-blank context problems – your brain is already tuned in to the problem-solving formula.

If your strength is visual (spatial relationships) you’re also going to benefit from thinking about the connections between words, and particularly if you draw them on paper so you can see them. Use color-coding on your flash cards; the visual clues (red = noun, blue = adjective, etc.) that you look for without even knowing will help you quickly categorize and remember your vocabulary words. Whenever you can, find or draw a picture that illustrates the definition of a word, and keep that image in your mind when studying the word.

If your strength is physical (motion), then you need to get your body involved in your vocabulary study. This can involve anything from walking back and forth while you study a list of words to making sure you write out every word you’re trying to learn, so that your hand works with your brain to make the connection. You’ll also benefit from vocabulary-centered board games or on-line learning tools that require you to pick things up and move them around – again, the more physical effort you make in your study process, the better you’ll retain what you’re studying.

No matter what your strength is, you’ll benefit from using all of the techniques described above. The more ways you learn something, the more easily you’ll absorb and remember the lesson.

Reference: Campbell, Bruce, Linda Campbell, and Dee Dickinson. Teaching and Learning Through Multiple Intelligences. NY: Allyn & Bacon. 1996. (2nd edition)

When does a word become part of English vocabulary? You could argue that the first time anyone invents a new word and uses it, it has become part of the vocabulary, because it exists, but if no one else knows about it, the word won’t exist for very long. New words that get picked up and used by more and more people are generally referred to as “slang” when they describe part of popular culture, and often reach that tipping point where they’re so much in use that they’re considered ordinary, and no longer slang. Some new words enter the vocabulary from specialized fields, such as medicine or physics, as new concepts and compounds are created that require new words to describe and define them, but these words often do not become part of ordinary spoken English.

For many people, a word is “officially” part of the English language when it is finally included in the Oxford English Dictionary. Since the 1800s the committee members at the OED have been evaluating and categorizing words, and are currently working on a Third Edition of the OED (the Second Edition was published in 1989). The print version of the OED is rather inconveniently large to carry around (20 volumes!) but you can subscribe to the on-line edition (go to www.oed.com) for a yearly fee. New words are added four times a year, as well as revisions to existing words and definitions.

The June 2010 additions include these entries:

caffè ristretto: The Italian (and now English) term for a “short shot” of espresso made with less water and/or finer coffee grounds, producing a more intense and concentrated liquid.

geoengineering: Manipulating aspects of Earth’s structure or climate to affect the planetary system on a global scale.

hindbrain: The lower rear portion of the brain that contains the segments responsible for automatic functions such as breathing.

hot-dogging: A term used in sports such as surfing, skiing, snowboarding, and skateboarding, this describes the act of performing showy or daring stunts and tricks.

Yesterday we talked about some of the online resources you can use for vocabulary study and practice; today we’ll review a few hard-copy paper books that are useful references, and which should be available in your local library. Whether you’re interested in learning new words for fun, or you’re studying for an examination, you’ll find these resources worth keeping on hand.

Better WordPower
(Janet Whitcut, Oxford University Press)

With an extensive “Topics” section, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone who needs to get a quick lesson in category-specific vocabulary. Architecture, finance, law, physics, and music are only a few of the targeted areas, providing hundreds of terms that are necessary to be confident and competent when working in those fields. We recommend this book for anyone whose native language is not English who is considering moving to an English-speaking country for a job in one of these professions.

English Vocabulary Quick Reference: A Dictionary Arranged by Word Roots
(Roger Crutchfield, Lexadyne Publications)

After you’ve put all that effort into studying and memorizing word roots, as we’ve suggested, wouldn’t it be nice to have a dictionary that groups its entries by those root words? Here it is, ready for your use and reference when you’re studying for the SAT. In fact, this dictionary color-codes its entries, highlighting the ones that often appear on SAT exams.

The Words You Should Know to Sound Smart
(Robert Bly, Adams Media)

This book is subtitled “1200 Words Every Sophisticated Person Should Able to Use” and – well, that says it all. Robert Bly is a professional author, and his humorous take on language is a pleasure to read. Each word has a pronunciation guide, a definition, a notation on which part of speech it is, and an example of how the word is used. The index at the end will help you quickly find both specific and related entries.

Endangered Words: A Collection of Rare Gems for Book Lovers
(Simon Hertnon, Skyhorse Publishing)

This book is a delight, if you’re the sort of person who’s delighted by the beauty of words. The author has collected 100 old to modern words that are not in general use but, he believes, should be. For anyone who enjoys using new or unusual words for the sheer poetic fun of it, this is an enjoyable reference. Of course, if you already know the meaning of ambsace, handsel, and zemblanity, you might need to choose another book!

Submit a comment with your suggestions for interesting and useful vocabulary reference books.

If you’re like most people with easy access to a computer and the internet, you probably spend a few hours each day surfing the web, checking out the latest sports results, news feeds, or celebrity gossip line. Instead, put some of those free hours into cyberstudy, and improve your vocabulary with targeted exercises and research on some of the many sites available to the general public related to vocabulary and word-building skills. Here are several useful sites that can help you improve your vocabulary:

www.FreeRice.com

We’ve talked about this site before, but it’s worth repeating, given that this is one of the best on-line sites for quick, fun, word-definition quizzes. The vocabulary choices run towards the obscure sometimes, but since these obscure words often appear on the higher-level examinations you may be studying for (such as the GRE or the SAT), it’s worth your time to click on this site – especially because each time you get a word right, a small donation is made towards the World Food Programme and their campaign to end hunger. There’s both personal and philanthropic motivation to use this site!

In addition, since the Free Rice site started, they’ve expanded beyond just an English-vocabulary quiz game, and now have quiz categories in English grammar and basic math, both of which are helpful for review if you’re studying for the SAT or the PSAT. It’s a fun, educational, and beneficial way to spend a few minutes (or more) every day.

www.OED.com

The world standard for English dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, has several sites that you’ll find useful. While on-line access to the full OED requires a subscription, you can freely browse the main OED site for the latest news, interesting commentaries on word origins, and quizzes and learning tools. The main OED site has links to their other associated sites, such as AskOxford, which give you expanded resources and search capabilities.

www.Etymologic.com

In previous posts, we’ve discussed the importance of studying word roots to help you learn and remember related words. For example, knowing that the Latin word scribere means “to write,” you’ll have a better idea what the words subscribe and scribble might mean. The Etymologic site gives you an opportunity to explore word origins with humorous (and challenging!) quizzes.

Do you have a favorite on-line vocabulary resource? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

When children first begin to speak, they learn new words from listening to people talking to them and around them. Parents are encouraged to read to their children every day, to increase the number of words their children are exposed to, and to help them develop their reading and word identification skills. Studies around the world have shown that children whose parents (or other caretakers) read to them show, in general, measurable improvements in their working vocabulary and communication skills.

This process doesn’t have to end with childhood. One of the best ways you can improve your own vocabulary is to read as much as you can, choosing your reading materials from a wide range of topics.

Read About Things That Interest You

Reading should be fun, even if it’s reading for a school or work project. If you’re interested in sports, look for biographies of famous athletes, or books on the history of a sport. Mixing fiction and non-fiction will give you the largest selection of new words, and will help keep your interest in the topic. When you come across a word that’s new to you:

• write it down
• look it up
• create two new sentences using the word

Practice the words you’ve learned several times to help you remember them. Make a note of any new words you’ve learned that appear in more than one book; these words are important ones to learn and use so that you can speak knowledgeably about the topic.

Read About Things You Didn’t Know Would Interest You

Have you ever been reading a book or newspaper, a magazine or on-line article, and said to yourself, “Hey – that’s interesting; I didn’t know that before”? When you find your interest piqued by something, follow up on it. You’ll be led into a new area of research and publications which will provide you with even more new vocabulary. The more varied your vocabulary, the better able you’ll be to express yourself. In addition, learning one new word will often give you clues to the meaning of other new words that might be related (for example, they might share a root or a suffix) and that will increase your ability to accumulate and assimilate these new words into your working vocabulary.

Keep reading throughout your life, and you’ll never run out of things to say!

For more information, see the publication “Mother-Child Bookreading in Low-Income Families: Correlates and Outcomes”

In the previous post, we talked about the process of officially adding new words to the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, a process that can take years, even though many new words enter the common spoken language every day as a natural process of language change, or to keep up with changes in society, or perhaps just because people like to play with language and invent new ways of saying things.

Compounding Words

One way of inventing a new word is to take two or more words and put them together. This process is called compounding. Notice that in compound words, the new word may mean something completely different, with no relation to either of the original words:

• greenhouse – a place to nurture plants (not “a house that is painted green”)
• blackboard – a chalkboard or slate (while most are black, some are grey or green)
• wetsuit – a scuba diver’s outfit (not “a suit that got wet”)

A variation of compounding is called blending. In this process, the two words are combined by dropping parts of both words before putting them together. A new word in the OED for 2009 was celebutante, created by blending the words “celebrity” and “debutante” to make a word that describes a famous person who is also part of the wealthy fashionable society class. Some other examples of blending are brunch (breakfast + lunch), telethon (telephone + marathon), smog (smoke + fog), and infomercial (information + commercial).

Redefinition

The virtual world – computers, software applications, the internet, chat rooms, etc. – is changing even more rapidly than the real world, and new terminology is introduced on a regular basis. Quite often, these words are new definitions of existing words that have been adapted to describe new phenomena. As early as 1998, the OED had added a new definition of “spam” – no longer just a canned meat product, spam is now also defined as “irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users.”

In 2009, a new definition of the word zombie was added to the OED. Rather than referring only to a flesh-eating monster from a horror film, it now also means a computer that has been remotely taken over by a hacker, and used to flood another computer system (usually belonging to a bank or other high-profile organization) with so many requests (so much spam!) that the system shuts down.

When you come across a word that’s new to you, take a look at its structure and see if you can identify how it was formed. Do you see a prefix or a suffix added to a root word? Is it a combination of two other words? The Ultimate Vocabulary program provides information on many word origins – and you can always google it!

Every year, new words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the definitive reference for English vocabulary for over a century. These words might be slang terms that have become commonly used, additional definitions for existing words, or entirely new words that have been created to keep up with our ever-changing world. The process of getting a word accepted for inclusion takes time. For example, you’ve probably heard someone say “I’ll google that when I get home” – meaning “I’ll use the Google search engine to look that up on line.” Google (the product) became available in 1998; google (the verb) was added to the OED in 2006.

However, new words are created and used daily by people all over the English-speaking world, whether those words are officially part of the English language or not. English is a very flexible language, and there are many ways to create a new word. Here are four examples of ways new words are created:

• by adding a suffix
• by adding a prefix
• by compounding two or more words together
• by creating new definitions of, or uses for, existing words

Adding a Suffix

A suffix is one or more letters (as a group, these are called an affix) added to the end of a word (called the root) to make a new word that has a meaning that can be related back to the original root word.

The word aerobicized was added to the OED in 2009 as an adjective meaning “made fit or in shape due to aerobic exercise.” This word was created by adding the suffix -ize (meaning “to make”) to the word aerobic. Other examples of words created using this suffix include harmonize (to make harmonic), emphasize (to make emphatic), and modernize (to make modern).

Adding a Prefix

A prefix is an affix that is put on the beginning of a word to create a new word.

The OED added the word upskill in 2009 as a verb meaning “to teach someone new skills” – that is, to “up” their skill level. The prefix up- is used as a prefix in many words, including upscale, upstream, and uphold, all with the sense of directing something upwards. Another common prefix is re- (meaning “again”) as demonstrated in the words reprint, redo, and reload.

In the next post, we’ll look at two more methods of creating new English words: compounding and redefinition.

For a thousand years, the center of Western civilization was Rome. At one point, the Roman Empire stretched from the British Isles to northern Egypt, and all roads truly led to Rome, connecting peoples of many cultures and languages under Roman rule. The official language of Rome was Latin, and even after the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin remained the language used in official proceedings, particularly in the church, in law, in medicine, and in the sciences. Up until the late 19th century, it was common for schools and universities to require the study of Latin, and even today, anyone who wants a career as a doctor, a lawyer, or a scientist needs to have at least a familiarity with Latin, since much of the terminology of those fields remains in the original Latin.

Many words in English have Latin derivation – that is, they are derived from, or have their origins in, a Latin word. For example, the word derivation comes from the Latin word derivare, meaning “from the source”. There are also many Latin words and phrases that remain in the English language unchanged from the days of Julius Caesar. In fact, you may have used them yourself, without realizing the fact that you’re speaking Latin like Lucullus. Here are some common Latin phrases used in everyday English conversation:

terra firma (TEHR-ah FIR-ma): “solid land”
Definition: the ground, the earth
Example: After that turbulent airplane flight, I’m glad to be back on terra firma!

ad nauseam (ad NAW-zee-uhm): “to the point of nausea”
Definition: when something goes on or is repeated until you’re sick of it
Example: Over the holidays, the local radio station played “White Christmas” ad nauseam.

non sequitur (nawn SEH-kwih-ter): “it does not follow” 
Definition: a remark or comment in a conversation that has no relationship to what was said before
Example: “And that’s how I met my future husband. How did you meet your wife?” “I like pie.”

curriculum vitae (kur-IH-kyu-luhm VEE-tay): “course of life”
Definition: your qualifications, experience, awards received, and job history (a résumé, but in more detail)
Example: To help you get the best job, be sure to list your professional certifications on your curriculum vitae.

et cetera (et SET-er-ah): “and the rest” 
Definition: used to shorten a long list, usually abbreviated as “etc.”
Example: The charity shop sells clothes (socks, shirts, etc.) and old books for a good price.

per diem (per DEE-em): “by day” 
Definition: in business, the dollar amount an employee can spend each day as part of his or her travel expenses
Example: The sales budget allows for a $100 per diem in Seattle, and a $150 per diem in Hong Kong.

status quo (STAT-us KWOH): “the state in which”
Definition: what currently exists, or the situation as it presently stands
Example: If we can’t lower the world’s population, we should at least try to maintain the status quo and work towards zero population growth.

What other common Latin phrases do you know? The list goes on ad infinitum!

When does a word become “official” English? Some people say it’s when the word is included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the multivolume resource that has been evolving for over a century, which currently contains over 200,000 words in current use. It can take some time for a word to become prevalent enough for it to be considered a standard word in English. For example, while the popular musical genre known as “emo” can be traced back to the punk rock bands of the 1980s, the word “emo” was not included in the OED until 2006.

The word “neologism” comes from the Greek roots neo- (meaning “new”) and logos (meaning “word”). A neologism, then, is a new word. Here are some of the new words that were added to the OED in 2009:

• bailout
• blogosphere
• reinstalling
• repaginate

Who hasn’t heard the news of all of the bank and industry bailouts over the past year? It’s certainly been the talk of the blogosphere. In fact, many people get almost all of their news via blogs these days. Several major blogs had to upgrade their systems to handle all the traffic, which frequently involved reinstalling their on-line routers and servers. Many of them changed their formats to be easier for their readers to use, which required them to repaginate their content.

We’re sure all of those words were already familiar to you, and that you hear and use many more neologisms every day. But it’s just as important to explore the richness of the English language and study those words that have proved their worth over the years – the powerful, precise, descriptive words that the Ultimate Vocabulary courses explain in detail.

Many words that end up in the OED start out as slang (like “bonkers,” meaning “crazy”) and it’s important to keep the distinction in mind. Use words that are appropriate to the occasion and the topic. Think about these two sentences:

“He was so lugubrious that it was hard to work with him.”
“I couldn’t relate to my coworker – he was such a drag!”

Both are ways of describing someone who is sorrowful, depressed, or sad, but in general you’d only use the second sentence when speaking with a friend or in a casual conversation. Knowing when to use words is just as important as knowing how to use them. When you’re working on your vocabulary, be sure to practice each word by imaging realistic situations and using natural-sounding sentences, and you’ll soon be an old hat at these new words.