Ultimate Vocabulary – Vocabulary Building Software

Vocabulary for Success: Show Expertise With Expert Ease

June 23, 2011

“A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.” – Charles Lamb

With respect to punning, we respectfully disagree with Mr. Lamb. While many people think that puns are only a cheap way to get laughs (or groans), we think that when you’re able to show your in-depth knowledge of English vocabulary by making subtle plays on words, you’ll get the admiration of your audience, not their jeers. In order to make a good pun, you need to know the definition of all of the words you’re using and exactly how to pronounce them – many puns rely on the similar sounds of two or more words. You also need to know why the substitution of the words is humorous in context, and often you’ll be setting up the pun as the punchline of a joke, so you’ll need to be a skilled storyteller as well, to keep the audience listening to you up until the final bons mots.

Did you know that Dean Martin was a scuba diver? It’s obvious, when you hear this line from his 1953 hit song: “When you swim by a reef/The big eel with the teeth/That’s a moray.”

People have been making puns ever since the invention of languages with enough words in them to allow for substitutions. William Shakespeare, praised for his skill with language and his invention of many of the English words we use today, was fond of including puns in his plays. Here are two from Romeo and Juliet:

Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling; being but heavy, I will bear the light. (Act i, scene 4)

‘Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve: ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. (Act iii, scene 1)

When you’re studying new vocabulary words, make careful note of the pronunciation as well as the definition, and see if you can come up with any homophones (other words that sound the same). In the examples above, the humor comes from the double meanings of one word in each line (grave = sad, somber / grave = a place to bury the dead; light = illumination / light = not weighing much). Study the examples of puns you come across, practice making your own, and try them out in conversation. You can even include puns and other wordplay in professional presentations, especially if you can find a play on words that involves some aspect of the topic you’re covering.

Learn the tricks of the tongue that will turn you into a real pundit – and have fun with English vocabulary!

How to Learn New English Vocabulary Every Day

June 21, 2011

Sometimes you’ll have a specific set of words you need to learn (for example, if you’re preparing to take the SAT or GRE), and those words will be given to you in a suggested study guide or set of practice tests. At other times, you might want to increase your chances of promotion by expanding your vocabulary in a new or related field, adding to your value as an employee. There’s something to be said, though, for the words you learn accidentally, through serendipity, in a random fashion as you go throughout your day.

Random is an adjective that means “unpredictable,” “done without planning,” or “unrelated to what has come previously.” Unlike a GRE study plan, where you know in advance what topics you need to cover and what words you need to learn, random vocabulary acquisition brings you a range of words that you wouldn’t have thought of, at unexpected times and sometimes in odd places.

Think about all of the signs you pass on the street, or the magazines and newspapers you happen to glance through while waiting for an appointment. If you focus your attention on the written words you see, you’ll often come across a word that you don’t know. We recommend that you carry a word journal with you to write unfamiliar words down in, so that you can look them up later. If you listen to the news in the morning, you’ll hear stories on a variety of topics, and if you pay attention to the words that you hear, we’re sure you’ll find at least one every day that will pique your interest. Many radio and television broadcasts have on-line transcripts on their station’s website, so if you’ve heard a word during your morning commute and don’t have time to write it down, make a mental note to look it up later.

Scientists, mathematicians, and computer programmers often use random number generators to provide them with a beginning data point, a statistical range, or an encryption key. Random numbers are also frequently used in lotteries and other gambling games that need to keep the element of chance. If you’d like to take a gamble on which word you’ll learn that day, find a paper dictionary, flip it open to any page, and place your finger somewhere on that page. Whatever word your finger is pointing to can be your vocabulary word for the day.

Keep your eyes and ears open for new vocabulary words every day, and you’ll be amazed at the number of words you’ll learn just by chance.

English Vocabulary for Success: Indolent

June 17, 2011

Daily vocabulary study is essential for quickly improving your English vocabulary and your ability to remember and correctly use all of the words you need to help you succeed at work, to get the best grades at university, to score high on the SAT or GRE, and to feel confident in conversation with everyone you come in contact with. However, like anything that you put on your list of “self-improvement tasks” (exercising, eating enough fiber, flossing your teeth), it sometimes takes energy to keep this task going, especially before it’s become a habit. It’s particularly difficult to do things that require effort when you’re feeling tired and a bit lazy.

The adjective indolent might describe you at those times. This word comes from two Latin roots, the prefix in- (“not”) and the verb dolere (“to suffer pain”). It’s certainly the easier route to not work hard. Someone who is indolent makes a habit of avoiding work and procrastinating. Synonyms other than lazy include slothful and lethargic. The noun that describes this state of being is indolence.

Example: I had six projects that I wanted to get done this weekend, but the sunshine and good weather made me so indolent that all I had to show by Monday was a suntan.

If you’re feeling disinclined to study, try introducing new elements into your routine. Rather than sitting down and memorizing a list of words, create a story with them. If you’re only using reference books to look up and learn new words, pick up a novel by an accomplished author, or a non-fiction book on a topic that interests you, and make notes on the words you don’t know (look them up later unless you need the definition to continue reading and understanding the text). If you’re used to studying alone, find a conversation group or a study partner – you’ll get inspiration from other people, and it will be easier to stay with your study schedule if you’re working with someone else.

Whatever you do, keep going! You’ll quickly find that the benefits of an improved English vocabulary are worth any amount of work.

How to Make Progress in English Vocabulary Study

June 14, 2011

One important aspect of any study program is setting goals, and achieving them. If you have a specific schedule that you follow in your vocabulary study sessions, and target dates with goals you’ve set (either for a specific purpose, such as the SAT test, or a certain number of words learned), you’ll find it’s easier to manage your study plan, track your improvement, and celebrate your goals. You can do this tracking by using a software program like Ultimate Vocabulary, or a simple spreadsheet. You can also use a calendar; in this case, we recommend buying or making a calendar that you use only for vocabulary study, so that your milestones and to-do lists don’t get lost amid the dentist appointments and lunch dates.

People have been tracking the progress of things through time since time began. Many of the early tools for tracking time involved the moon, the sun, and the stars, because these were (and are) both always moving and always in the same paths. It’s possible to set up markers to measure the position of the sun, for example, at the midpoints of the year, known as the solstices. The word solstice has an easily-recognized root word: the Latin sol, meaning “sun.” The other half of the word comes from the Latin verb sistere, meaning “to stand, to stop.” At the summer solstice, the sun appears to rise in the same place for a few days before “moving” back towards the south as the days get shorter.

The Latin verb sistere is the root of another English word, the verb assist. In this case, the word adds the prefix a(d)-, meaning “with.” When you assist someone, you “stand with” them, helping them in a specific task. If you’re having problems keeping to your vocabulary study schedule, you can ask someone to assist you, either by helping you with difficult words, or giving you quiz-format questions in your study sessions, or by being a study partner. Sometimes it’s easier to stick to a schedule when you have someone who’s expecting you to be there to do the work. Study partners can also encourage each other as well as helping each other, and when you’ve reached your goals, you’ll have someone to celebrate with.

Set your goals, track your progress, and let an improved English vocabulary help you to succeed at work and school!

English Vocabulary: Posing Perennial Problems

June 13, 2011

Pretentious is one of the words that the Merriam-Webster online dictionary site says is the most frequently looked up. Is it because of the spelling? Maybe it’s the pronunciation that people are looking for, or the definition. In some cases, it’s all of the above. These three aspects of learning a vocabulary word pose a perennial problem for a student of the English language. The word perennial is a good one to use as an example of how to study English vocabulary, because it’s a challenging word in all three of these areas.

Learning a word’s definition. You can take a quick look at a dictionary to find a definition of a word, and when you glance at the first entry in most dictionaries, you’ll find that perennial is an adjective meaning “lasting throughout the year.” If that’s all you think you need to know, you might stop there. However, what would you think if you then read the following two sentences?

The garden center is having a sale on perennials.

Deciding on the summer carnival theme is a perennial issue for the town council.

How can a garden center be selling adjectives? And does the town council think about the summer carnival theme all year long? If you’d looked into more definitions of the word, you would have seen that perennial can also be a noun, referring to plants that grow year-round, and that another meaning of the word as an adjective is “occurring over and over.” It’s important to look at all aspects of a word’s definition so that you’ll understand its meaning in any context.

Pronouncing words correctly. Knowing how to pronounce a word gives you the ability to use it correctly in conversation, and to be understood. If you’re mispronouncing a word, you will confuse your listeners if they hear a word they don’t recognize. There’s additional confusion possible if you’re pronouncing one word incorrectly, but that incorrect pronunciation is the correct way to say a completely different word. The word perennial is pronounced puh-REH-nee-uhl. If you accidentally put the stress on the third syllable, and say peh-reh-NEE-uhl, you’re not describing a long-lasting plant, you’re referring to a rather personal area of the human body. Not only does this cause problems in comprehension, it also gives your listeners a poor impression of your knowledge.

Learning how to spell a word. Doubled letters within a word often cause problems for people trying to spell them, and this word is no exception. How will you remember that the r is not doubled, but the n is? One way is to look at the etymology of the word for clues. Perennial comes from the Latin roots per (meaning “through”) and annus (meaning “year”). By learning this, you can remember that the double n comes from annus.

Study each new word in detail, and you’ll enjoy the lasting benefits of an excellent English vocabulary!

How an Excellent English Vocabulary Gives You Power

June 10, 2011

When you have a good command of English, and know a wide variety of powerful and expressive vocabulary words, you’ll have the ability to effectively communicate with people in any situation. Knowing the right word to use at exactly the right time is like having a magic wand that allows you to change and control situations to get the results you want.

In fairy tales and mythology, people with extraordinary powers were often called wizards. The word comes from the Middle English word for “wise” (wys). Wisdom comes in many forms, from learned behaviors to acquired skills to comprehensive knowledge on one or more topics. When you’re able to use words skillfully, you present an image of someone who is wise, and who has complete confidence in their knowledge of the topic. When this is the image you project to your audience, they’ll believe in your wisdom, listen attentively, and be open to your ideas and suggestions.

A good way to gain more skill with English vocabulary is to spend some time studying the history of a word, and what root words it comes from. This helps you expand both your knowledge of that word in particular, and in general of the words related to and connected to the specific word you’re studying. Equally important is the knowledge of which words are not related to each other, though they seem to share the same origins. Linguists call these pairs “false cognates” – the words wizard and wizen form one such pair.

If you look at the history of the word wizened (an adjective meaning “shriveled, shrunken”) you’ll see that it comes from a completely different root, unrelated to the word “wise.” Instead, this word has its origins in the Old English verb wisnian, meaning “to dry up, wither.” A plant that doesn’t get enough nutrients or water might look wizened: frail, desiccated, and not standing up straight. This adjective is sometimes used to refer to people as well when they’re very old, and their skin is dry and wrinkled, their body is shrunken and stooped over, and in general they have a very frail appearance.

As time goes by and you acquire more knowledge of English vocabulary and how to best use it, you’ll start to see the magic of words.

What’s the Difference Between These Words?

June 8, 2011

Is this a question you often ask yourself? Or do you phrase it more like “I wish I could stop mixing up these two words!” There are many pairs of English words that people confuse, usually because of similarities in spelling and pronunciation. We looked at some of these word pairs in this post and this post, and today we’ll look at another pair of words that frequently gets people into trouble.

poring v. pouring

If you’re trying to figure out the difference between words, you might spend hours in the library, poring over the entries in dictionaries and other reference books. To pore over means to study or to do research. The etymology (the origin and history) of this word is somewhat uncertain, but it may come from an Old English word that meant “to investigate.” One of the reasons that people may get this word confused is that the more common definition of pore is the noun meaning “an opening” that can refer to the pores in one’s skin, or in its adjectival form porous which means “containing openings or passages,” both of which come from the Greek word for passage, poros. Perhaps you could remember this word by thinking of the “passage” of knowledge from the material you’re studying into your brain.

Example: In the closing scene of the movie, we see the wizard poring over a dusty scroll in his dimly-lit library, searching for the counterpart to the spell.

The word pouring is generally a homophone of poring according to most people’s normal pronunciation of the two words, although linguistically there might be a slight difference in the vowel sounds ou and o. Because the words sound the same, the spellings can be easy to confuse. To pour over means to inundate or cover with something, usually liquid or (more metaphorically) sound or noise.

Example 1: This restaurant always gives you a set of three homemade sauces for pouring over ice cream or sorbet when you order either of those desserts.

Example 2: I love to turn up the volume on the stereo when I’m listening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and just let the sound pour over me.

Here’s a trick to remembering which spelling to use: the word umbrella starts with a U, and when it’s pouring rain, you need to use an umbrella. Remember this trick, and you won’t have to pore over your written documents, looking for places you’ve confused these two words!

Why English Words Are Spelled the Way They Are

June 6, 2011

Beowulf wæs breme – blæd wide sprang –
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.

A thousand years ago, if you had read this text (assuming that you were one of the relatively few people in Western Europe who could read back then), you’d know that you were reading about a young hero, and that “this Beowulf was famous – praises of him flew far and wide – the son of Scyld, living in the Scandian lands.” In the intervening centuries, though, words have changed and have been added to the English language, and many of the words that were present in the earliest forms of English are now spelled and pronounced in an entirely different fashion.

Almost immediately after the creation of English as a written language, people started changing its orthography, the way the words are spelled and written. At first, the spelling changed depending on how each person heard the word, using a more phonetic spelling. It was common to have a variety of spellings of common words, but because they matched the way the words were pronounced (more or less) and because the number of written texts and people who could read them was smaller than it is today, the issue of developing a consistent English orthography was not addressed until after the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. As more people started to read, they began to notice that the same words were spelled in different ways depending on where the material was published. However, it wasn’t until the 1800s and the emergence of the field of phonetics (the study of the sounds common and unique to various languages) that people started working towards developing a standard spelling and pronunciation of English words.

Today there are people who want to simplify the rules of spelling, usually on a phonetic basis (for example, making it so that the last parts of the words rough and cough would be spelled differently because they’re pronounced differently). One of the common examples of why the current multiplicity of ways to pronounce the same sequences of letters is not a good thing is the constructed word ghoti – which, as you may have heard, can be pronounced “fish.” Why?

say “gh” as in “tough” (f)
say “o” as in “women” (ih)
say “ti” as in “explanation” (sh)
. . . and you get “fish”

An extreme example of this phenomenon is the word ghoughpteighbteau. Can you guess how it might be pronounced?

say “gh” as in “hiccough” (p)
say “ough” as in “though” (oh)
say “pt” as in “pterodactyl” (t)
say “eigh” as in “neighbor” (ay)
say “bt” as in “debtor” (t)
say “eau” as in “bureau” (oh)
. . . and you get “potato”

In the end, with all of the changes that English has gone through, and continues to go through with newly-developed words and ones that are adopted from other languages, it’s not likely that the debate over spelling reform will be resolved soon.

Cross-posted at the Ultimate Spelling blog.

English Vocabulary for Success: Metamorphosis

June 3, 2011

The work you’re doing to improve your English vocabulary will also improve your ability to communicate, give presentations, and prepare documentation. As a result, you’ll see a remarkable transformation in your career.

The word metamorphosis means “transformation.” The word comes from the Greek roots meta (“change”) and morphe (“shape”). The Greek god Morpheus was the god of dreams, which is not surprising; in your dreams, things frequently have a different appearance than they do in reality. In our 21st-century mythology, you might recognize Morpheus as one of the characters in the science-fiction movie The Matrix who moves in and out of a dream-world of virtual reality. The character of Morpheus was based on a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, titled The Sandman, which is another name for the fairy-tale character who helps little children fall asleep.

One fictional character who fell asleep and woke up completely transformed is Gregor Samsa, who in Franz Kafka’s story Die Verwandlung (“The Metamorphosis”) becomes a giant insect and has to deal with his new life and how it affects his family. While this bizarre occurrence isn’t part of real life, the transformation that occurs when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or a tadpole becomes a frog, is just as extreme. Another real-life biological transformation occurs during evolution, a synonym for metamorphosis.

Not all metamorphoses (note the spelling of the plural form, going from -is to -es) are sudden or shocking. Changes can happen gradually over time, so subtly that people may not notice right away. If you’re spending 10 to 15 minutes every day on your English vocabulary study (which is the minimum we recommend for daily practice) your co-workers might not realize how much you’re improving your vocabulary skills if you’re only having casual conversations with them. However, when you’re selected to create the department’s procedure documentation manuals, or to give a presentation at the company meeting, they’ll definitely notice your new ability to spread your wings and fly high (or if you prefer a frog metaphor, to “hop ahead of the competition”).

Vocabulary study can truly change your life!

English Vocabulary and How to Communicate Effectively

June 1, 2011

Communication happens on many levels: when you’re talking to someone face-to-face, you’re noticing each other’s facial expressions and tone of voice, and reading what’s known as “body language” to get subtle and often unconscious clues about what the other person’s thinking. When you’re writing to someone, you can use visual clues to provide emphasis that mimics spoken language – for example, you CAN learn to effectively use capitalization to draw attention to words, and don’t forget that bold font can also be a useful textual choice (Note: Don’t over-use any of these features, however, or it will just be distracting).

In addition to all of these other aspects of communication, you need to make decisions about the words you choose to use. Communication is a skill like any other, and as you practice it you’ll be better at selecting the appropriate vocabulary for any situation. The goal of effective communication is to create a connection between people, and to use that connection to transmit information. One of the ways to strengthen that connection is to use words that have meaning for people, or that provide some sort of emotional impact, or pique their interest in some way. The vocabulary words you choose can help you create those points of interest, and the more words you know the better you’ll be able to tailor your communication to the specific people you’re addressing.

One of the ways to draw people in and attract their interest is to incorporate idioms and metaphors into your presentation. The reason this works is that when someone’s listening to you they may only be focused on the sensation of hearing, and using only one part of their attention. If you engage their other senses, those of vision and feeling, they’ll be more attentive and will retain more of what you’re saying. In a sense, you’re using your words to reach out and touch your audience. With that in mind, here are some common English idioms using the word touch that you might find useful in the future.

to touch on
To mention briefly.

touch-and-go
Describing a situation where failure and success are equally likely.

I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole
Meaning “I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

to have the Midas touch
From Greek mythology, where King Midas was blessed (or cursed) with the ability to turn anything into gold with the touch of a finger. You might also hear “everything she/he touches turns to gold.”

Stay in touch and tell us what you’re thinking about regarding English vocabulary issues!