Ultimate Vocabulary – Vocabulary Building Software

Tools For Vocabulary Review: Flash Cards

September 15, 2011

Even in this high-tech world, sometimes the most low-tech solutions are the best. When we designed the Ultimate Vocabulary software, we included a customizable system that allows you to create, use, and quiz yourself with “flash cards” containing the words you select (or the ones we recommend as being most useful). However, it’s not always possible to take your computer with you. With the traditional paper flash cards, on the other hand, your vocabulary study system is always right there in your pocket, available at a moment’s notice. For vocabulary on the go, take a few minutes to build a set of flash cards. We’ve provided some tips on creating and using them:

1. Buy a set of blank index cards.
These cards come in a range of sizes, from business cards to half-sheets; choose the one that you find easy to carry around, but make sure that it’s not too small. You need to have room to write out at least a good definition of the word.

2. Fill out the cards with words, definitions, and examples.
On one side of the card, write the word you want to learn. You can also write out the pronunciation of the word here, but leave enough room between the pronunciation guide and the word itself so that you can cover it up later when you’re quizzing yourself. On the other side of the card, write out the definition of the word. If there is more than one main definition, pick the ones that occur most often, or that you would use the most. Along the bottom of the card, write a sample sentence using the word correctly in context.

3. Quiz yourself!
The first way to test yourself is by only looking at the front of the cards. Read each word out loud (checking your pronunciation with the guide) and see if you can come up with the definition(s) that you’ve written on the back. When you feel that you know these words, flip the cards over, and try it the other way: read each definition, and try to remember what words they define. You can get a study partner to help you with this as well. For an advanced quiz, have your study partner read the sample sentence out loud (or have them create one of their own) leaving out the target word, and fill in the word that’s missing.

You can add many things to your flash cards to make them more useful. For example, you might include a small picture or drawing (done by hand, or perhaps from clip art or a magazine) that helps illustrate the meaning of the word. You can add lists of synonyms and antonyms to the definition side of the card, which will enhance your understanding of the target word while teaching you even more useful vocabulary words. You might also try color-coding the cards, either by using different colors of cards for different word groups (by difficulty, or by word type like nouns, verbs, etc.) or by marking the cards with colored pens.

These cheap, portable learning tools can help you find time for your vocabulary study no matter where you go. Give them a try!

The Building Blocks of Language: Names

September 13, 2011

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.
– Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II

The purpose of language is communication. In order to communicate on the most basic level, people need to share referents – people, places, things, and concepts – as well as ways to identify them and refer to them. The way we use language to do this is by assigning names. The word nomenclature is used to describe a set of names used in this way; the word comes from the Latin roots nomen (“name,” from the earlier Greek word onoma) and calare (“to call”). For many people, the first step in learning a new language is memorizing long lists of names for things, and associating the names in the new language with the names in the person’s native language.

In the beginning, perhaps people only need a few hundred words to get by. Even today, if you’re traveling in a foreign country and you don’t speak the language, if you’ve memorized a set of essential words like bread and telephone and lavatory you can usually manage to communicate, especially with the addition of some creative gestures and sign language. However, while you might be able to find the nearest train station this way, you probably won’t be able to ask about the origins of the name of the train station, or why it was built in that particular style, or what role it played in the emergence of that city as the capital of the country. The specialized vocabularies of politics, architecture, and history aren’t immediately necessary for the casual traveler and would require much more study.

It’s not enough that there are names for things; in order for communication to happen, people need to understand and agree on what names refer to which things. A good example of this is in the occasional difference between British English and American English. For example, a woman in London might put on a jumper when it gets chilly, but a girl in Seattle will reach for a sweater – and if you ask that Seattleite for a fish slice she’ll head for Pike Place Market and its piles of salmon, not to her kitchen for a spatula. The way things are named can be very important in certain fields. There are specific rules on the way to name new things in biology, chemistry, and astrophysics, and even groups such as the American Name Society, which is devoted to onomastics (the study of names and naming practices).

Think about names today, and the way you use language to refer to what you find in the world around you.

Vocabulary For Success: Ostensible

September 9, 2011

An important part of vocabulary study is learning the different meanings that words have, so that you can use them in a precise manner to best communicate your ideas, emotions, and intent. Some words are simple, with only one definition and use; for example, words like cathedral and yellow and giraffe, which refer to singular, specific things that wouldn’t be misunderstood in context by most listeners. But what about the words table and bank and adopt? You can table a motion or eat at a table, make a bank shot in billiards or sit on a river bank, adopt a child or encourage a co-worker to adopt the practice of alphabetizing their bank deposit slips. With these words, the context is as important as the word itself.

Some words have separate but related meanings that require you to understand the nuance (a subtle difference in meaning) of each definition. Today’s word, ostensible, is a good example of this. It comes from the Latin verb ostendere (“to stretch in front of, to show”) and at first glance, the two definitions of this word might seem identical. However, look at the two example sentences we provide below, and see if you can identify the difference:

Example 1: Jane is the ostensible authority on the committee rules – everyone goes to her with their questions on parliamentary procedure.

Example 2: The ostensible reason for his opposition to that legislation is that it would increase the deficit, but if you look at the list of donors to his political campaign, it’s obvious who would benefit if the law did not pass.

In the first sentence, the meaning of “apparent” is clear: Jane is obviously the authority because she’s got the answers people are looking for. We can assume that she’s giving the right answers, because people keep going back to her, so there’s no doubt about her knowledge.

In the second sentence, the meaning of “apparent” is more negative. The politician is providing one reason for his action out in the open (to reporters, perhaps, at a press conference), but there may be other reasons that he’s not providing, such as making sure that his wealthy supporters are happy. In this case, the use of the word ostensible implies that something is false, or done only for show.

By paying close attention to the slight differences in a word’s meaning and the way it’s used in context, you can be sure that you’ll be a true expert in the English language.

The Value of Vocabulary Study

September 7, 2011

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that we regularly encourage you to spend time looking up the history of words (their etymology), practicing how to spell and pronounce them correctly, and reading as much as you can of as many different types of text as you find to increase your exposure to the widest possible range of new vocabulary. As part of this process, we try our best to convince you that this is time well spent, because of the benefits an improved vocabulary will bring you in your career, your educational goals, and your self-esteem. In other words, we do a bit of proselytizing in hopes that you’ll become a devoted lover of the English language.

Today we’ll look at the word proselytize, and demonstrate the ways we talked about above to study this word. Though you may not have seen this word before, it’s been in the English language since at least the 17th century, and many writers have used it. Here’s a quote from author Aldous Huxley, best known for his novel Brave New World:

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

In the 15th century, a proselyte was someone who had converted from Christianity to Judaism; the word comes from a Greek root meaning “to come over.” The verb to proselytize later referred to the act of persuading someone to change their religious beliefs, or converting them to a different faith. We use the word for the same purpose these days, as well as in a more generic sense of trying to convert people to a particular point of view (religious or not) or to get them to support a particular cause.

It’s important to study both the spelling and pronunciation of this word – they’re a bit tricky. Proselytize is pronounced PRAW-sell-ih-tiez, and because of the i-sound of the y, you might be tempted to spell the word proselitize instead. Another point of confusion in pronunciation and meaning might come from the fact that it appears to start with the unrelated word prose (“written language that is not poetry”), which is pronounced PROZE, not PRAWZ.

Practice writing out this word several times to lock the correct spelling in your eyes, hand, and brain, then say it out loud using the correct pronunciation. To ensure that you remember the word’s meaning, write out one or two practice sentences. You can also search for the word being used in context in someone else’s writing (the internet is a very useful resource for this particular exercise).

If you weren’t convinced of the value of vocabulary study before now, we hope we’ve changed your mind!

Words of the Day: Precipitate and Predilection

September 5, 2011

We might be getting ahead of ourselves with two words instead of one, but we hope that by giving you a bigger taste of the wonderful world of English vocabulary today, you’ll find you have a tendency to want even more information about useful and powerful words you can use to improve your English vocabulary. To give you an example of how useful these words are, let’s rewrite that sentence:

We might be precipitate in offering two words instead of one, but we hope that showing you how many interesting words there are to learn will give you a predilection towards increasing the time you spend on your vocabulary study.

In this example sentence, we’ve used the adjectival form of precipitate, meaning “done in haste or without prior thought.” When you use this word as a verb, it means “to cause to happen suddenly or unexpectedly.” The word comes from the Latin verb praecipitare (“to fall”) and was first used in the 16th century in England to describe the chemical reaction in which bits of solid matter suddenly form from a liquid and fall to the bottom of a container. The speed of this chemical process, as well as the action of the solids in solution, led to both senses of the word. We commonly use the word precipitation to refer to rain or sleet falling from the sky.

Predilection refers to a preference for or tendency towards something. If you have a predilection for salty foods rather than sweet, you’ll probably choose to snack from the bowl of pretzels at a party instead of the one filled with candy. This noun comes from another Latin verb, diligere (“to choose”), along with the prefix pre- (“before”). Your predilection is the thing you choose before anything else.

Notice that although both English words begin with the letters pre, only the second word actually contains a true prefix meaning “before.” If you didn’t know the meaning of the word precipitate and came across it while reading, you might be searching for a definition that had the sense of “before (something)” to figure out the meaning of the sentence or passage as a whole, and you’d probably end up being very confused. Taking the time to do a little research into a word’s etymology will help you understand its meaning, and improve your ability to quickly add new words to your vocabulary.

Vocabulary Resources For New College Students

September 1, 2011

Going to college can be challenging for many students. There are new rules to follow, but also the freedom to choose to not follow those rules. Instead of having parents help with homework and deadlines, students are left to themselves, fully responsible for doing their assignments on time. If you’ve helped your child develop good study habits throughout their secondary school years, they’ll enjoy an advantage once they get to college. A daily vocabulary study routine is a good way to introduce students to the concept of regular, focused study time – and a way to show them the rewards of their effort.

If you have a student going off to college this year (or if you’re a student yourself) we’d like to recommend these resources that will help improve vocabulary, writing, and general communication skills. The vast majority of university degree programs require students to pass at least one writing course in order to graduate or advance in the course sequence, and students will need to be prepared for this requirement.

Destinations 2: Grammar for Academic Success
Destinations 2: Writing for Academic Success
(Nancy Herzfeld-Pipkin)
These books are primarily designed for English teachers, but are valuable resources for students as well. The books focus on the essentials of English grammar and writing skills, and the accompanying workbooks allow the students to set their own pace. The books are written at an intermediate to advanced vocabulary level. We recommend these books because having the explanation of the exercise as it is presented to the teacher can be more of a help than experiencing it only as a student. The self-paced nature of these books will also give students practice in setting up their own study plans. We like the focus on writing skills in the second book; it’s only through actively practicing writing that we improve our skills, but it’s often hard to just sit down and write. The second book gives the students examples, tasks, and guidelines to provide structure.

College Vocabulary 1-4 (Houghton Mifflin English for Academic Success)
(various authors)
The Academic Word List (AWL) is an internationally-used set of vocabulary words that most frequently appear in a wide range of academic texts used in English-language universities and colleges around the world. These four books focus on AWL vocabulary, and teaches students how to identify the words, define them, and use them correctly in context. Specific time is devoted to giving guidelines on how to remember the correct spelling and pronunciation of each word. Note: Level 1 is “low intermediate” and Level 4 is “high intermediate to advanced.”

Programmed College Vocabulary (7th Edition)
(George Feinstein)
This is a general overview of intermediate to advanced English vocabulary related to all the fields a college student will be expected to be familiar with, including psychology, computer science, social sciences, and poetry. The emphasis in this book is on using the vocabulary in oral and written communication.

Why Proper Pronunciation is Important

August 26, 2011

Although much of our modern-day communication is done using computers or mobile devices, it’s important that you learn how to pronounce words correctly as well as spell them correctly. While our word processing applications and phones are smart enough to tell us when we’re misspelling a word, that’s only useful when we’re writing to people rather than talking to them. Both writing and speech make an impact on people, and if you want to leave a good impression of your knowledge of a topic and your general level of education and ability, you need to practice the pronunciation of a word along with its spelling.

In many ways, knowing how a word is spelled will help you with its pronunciation, and knowing how to pronounce a word correctly will help you remember how it’s spelled. A good example of the connection between the two is the problem of metathesis, the transposing (switching of position) of letters in a word. Here are some examples of words that are often both misspelled and mispronounced due to this phenomenon:

cavalry (CAH-vuhl-ree)
Many people think that this word is pronounced CAL-vah-ree, and so tend to also misspell the word with the v and l transposed (incorrectly as calvary). Cavalry refers to troops of soldiers mounted on horses; Mount Calvary is a place mentioned in the Bible.

jewelry (JEW-el-ree)
Again, the tendency is to pronounce this word JEWL-er-ee, and spell it accordingly.

nuclear (NEW-klee-uhr)
A recent American president became notorious for his pronunciation of this word as NEW-kyu-luhr – it’s possible he tried to spell the word as nucular as well.

From the examples above, you can easily see that the right spelling will help you with the right pronunciation of a word. While most people will understand what you’re trying to say even when you do mispronounce a word, there are times when your meaning will be unclear, and this will lead both to misunderstandings and the impression that you’re not as capable or knowledgeable as you really are.

On the other hand, an occasional mispronunciation happens to everyone – there’s even a word to describe it: spoonerism. Named after a 19th-century English church leader named William Spooner, this word refers to a metathesis between two words rather than within one word, and only when spoken. Two famous examples of spoonerisms are from television broadcasts in the early 20th century, one where an announcer mentioned a “hypodeemic nerdle” (rather than a hypodermic needle), and another with an announcer’s statement that “All the world was thrilled by the marriage of the Duck and Doochess (Duke and Duchess) of Windsor.”

Malapropism happens when completely different word is used, often one that has similar pronunciation but not the same meaning, so that the sentence makes no sense. Shakespeare used malapropisms for comic effect; a good example comes from the lines spoken by the character Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, when he says that he and the other watchmen have captured “two auspicious persons.” Naturally, he didn’t mean that these persons would bring good fortune (the definition of auspicious) but rather that they were suspicious; that is, suspected of doing something wrong.

Watch your words, and your pronunciation, and no one will be suspicious that you don’t have a good command of your topic, and the English language.

Cross-posted on the Ultimate Spelling blog.

Merriam-Webster Adds New Words for 2011

August 25, 2011

While we tend to cite the Oxford English Dictionary as the authority for the English language and what words are “officially” part of it, there are many ways for words to become commonly used and accepted by English speakers in the United States, Britain, or around the world. It’s hard to pin a precise definition on what makes a word “official English” and as a result, different organizations tend to add words at different rates. In the United States, the Merriam-Webster company, which has been publishing and updating English dictionaries since the mid-19th century, has recently released a list of their “official English” words. Here are some of the words – many of them related to new technology, as you might expect – that you’ve probably been using for a while which have now achieved their official status:

tweet noun and verb
Definition: To post a message using the online service Twitter.

parkour noun
Definition: A competition, often held in urban areas, where athletes climb, jump, or otherwise get past any obstacle in their way (including buildings and other structures).
Note: This word was added to the OED in 2010.

m-commerce noun
Definition: Financial transactions done using a mobile device.

Americana noun
Definition: Things that are iconically “American” in nature, that are understood by the general public to represent a particular facet of the culture of the United States, past or present.

crowdsourcing verb
Definition: Using the input of many people, usually via online communication, to gather information and opinions that influence the development of products, answer problems or questions, or direct actions in some way.

social media noun
Definition: Any of the many ways that people can communicate using the internet through specific sites designed to make that communication easier, either between groups of people or one-on-one.

Wow! Examples of English Interjections!

August 16, 2011

There are many different parts of speech in the English language – you’re familiar with nouns and verbs, participles and prepositions, we’re sure – and these words are combined into sentences to express meaning and convey information. There’s another part of speech called an interjection. This category contains things that often aren’t words in and of themselves, and rather than conveying information, they express emotion. The word interjection comes from the Latin root word jactare (“to throw”) and prefix inter- (“between”). An interjection, therefore, is a vocalization (words, sounds, or a combination of the two) that you “throw” into the conversation to provide emphasis and which often give an emotional underlining to the words you’re saying. Here are some examples of English interjections, and how you might use them.

Alas! expressing sorrow or regret
Henry ran home expecting a party, but alas! His parents forgot his birthday.

Bingo! meaning “that’s it!” or “got it!”
Alan: So what you’re saying is that I can’t withdraw money until the check clears?
Bank Teller: Bingo!

Drat! expressing displeasure
Drat! I dropped the stack of student papers and now I have to sort them all over again.

Eureka! literally “I have found it!”
Eureka! I’ve figured out how to schedule my trip so there are no layovers!

Far out! used to show enthusiasm for something
You get to spend your summer on an archeological dig in Greece? Far out!

Geronimo! said right before you do something irrevocable
Are you ready to parachute out of the plane with me? One … Two … Geronimo!

Hear, hear! expressing support for what someone else has said
Colleen: I think that we should provide free lunches for all children at this school.
Herb: Hear, hear! There’s more than enough money in the budget.

I’ll say! like ‘hear, hear’ only more emphatic
Timothy: That was the scariest movie I’ve seen in years.
Zoey: I’ll say! I’m going to have nightmares for weeks.

No way! showing disbelief
She got promoted to manager? No way! She doesn’t know anything about this department!

Touché! acknowledging that someone has made a valid point
Lisa: I’m a vegetarian because I don’t believe in killing animals for any reason.
Rebecca: But you wear leather shoes, don’t you?
Lisa: Touché! I suppose I’ll have to change that, if I want to be consistent.

How Popular Culture Affects Vocabulary

August 15, 2011

Some people think that the English language is a fixed, unchanging set of words that have been around for centuries. They get discouraged when they come across words like impecunious and mentally assign them to the category of “words no one ever uses any more” along with forsooth and verily and prithee. This is a mistake, because there are thousands of words that are beautiful, expressive, and useful that can be a part of any modern English speaker’s vocabulary. Expanding your vocabulary with words from the past will give you an appreciation for the development of the English language in the present. There are always new words being added to the language, as discoveries are made and as people change and invent new ways of expressing their thoughts and emotions.

Older words often become new again through the global lens of popular culture. With the internet and all of the other ways we’re connected almost instantly to people around the world, anything that’s in the spotlight has an immediate impact – along with the words used to describe it. You may or may not have watched the recent royal wedding of Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton, but unless you were completely off the grid, you probably couldn’t avoid hearing something about the festivities and the couple’s first international goodwill tour. A lot of press was devoted to the new Duchess of Cambridge’s clothes, including this quote:

“She understands the sartorial demands of her role and how to project her personal taste and even her personality to a world the palace is not yet letting her publicly, verbally address.” – Amy Odell, New York Magazine (July 2011)

When this article was published, the internet dictionary site (and general word resource) at Merriam-Webster Online saw an immediate increase in the number of times people searched for the definition of sartorial. This word can be traced back to the time of another royal wedding, that of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, when it came into the English language from the Latin root word sartor, meaning “tailor.” The definition of the adjective sartorial is “related to clothing.”

By learning as many words as you can, both old and new, you’ll be able to tailor your vocabulary and take command of any conversation you’re in!