Ultimate Vocabulary – Vocabulary Building Software

Surf’s Up! More New Words in the OED

May 27, 2011

The Oxford English Dictionary recently added two terms peculiar to the 21st-century lifestyle: couch surfing and ego-surfing. If you’re a relatively independent 20-something* you’ve probably done a bit of both.

Ocean waves have been washing against the shore for millions of years, and at some point in the last several hundred years the word we use to name that phenomenon, the noun surf, entered the English language, possibly from India via trading missions, travelers, or early British colonies. The use of surf as a verb is more recent, dating back to the first part of the 20th century, when the term surfing was applied to the traditional Polynesian sport of riding the waves while standing on a plank of wood. The Hawai’ian surfer Duke Kahanamoku helped to popularize it as a sport in Australia and the United States, and today people surf the waves in places like California, Costa Rica, and the Canary Islands.

The idea of surfing the web naturally had to wait until the creation of the Internet, but it’s an apt term to describe how we skim over sites and pages – and how we sometimes find ourselves drowning in a sea of information! When you’re ego-surfing, you’re typing in your own name into a search engine to see whether or not you’re part of that ocean of facts and photos.

Surfers who can’t afford to stay in hotel rooms might travel around the world from beach to beach by couch surfing to save money. When you’re couch surfing, you’re staying with friends (or friendly strangers) who are willing to share their living space with you, allowing you to sleep on their couch for a few nights before you move on to the next location. There’s even a website devoted to matching up people who need a place to stay with those who have a place available.

Aloha!

* ”20-something” (or twentysomething) means “in their twenties” – that is, someone between 20 and 29 years old, a typical age for both ego- and couch-surfing. “30-something” is also commonly used, but other age decades are generally not referred to generically in this way. However, if you’re speaking about a specific person whose exact age you don’t know, you can say, “That dude must be 70-something and he’s still ripping the biggest waves.”

Why All Aspects of Vocabulary Study Are Important

May 26, 2011

If you play Scrabble with friends who frequently put down combinations of high-scoring letters that make you say something like “THAT’s not a word! What does it mean?” then you may have noticed that while they can frequently prove that what they’ve put down is a real word by referring to a dictionary, they won’t be able to define the word themselves or use it in a sentence. For a winning game of Scrabble, all you need to do is remember the patterns that the letters make, so you can play the word for the most points. This might work if you just want to memorize a list of words to become a world-class Scrabble player, but if you want to become a world-class English speaker, you’ll need to pay attention to more than the order of the letters in words.

Think about the last time you learned a new skill – how to ski, for example. The instructor would have told you how to correctly strap on your skis, how to stop and start, how to turn, the etiquette to use when on the slopes, and ways to navigate through the runs or trails without getting lost. If they had stopped with the first step, you’d still be standing there in the snow, with your skis on but with no idea of how to use them. When you’re learning English, merely “strapping on” a dictionary or a set of word lists won’t give you good vocabulary skills, just like simply wearing a pair of skis doesn’t make you a good skier.

You do need to know the patterns of the letters in a word, because you need to know how a word is correctly spelled. However, you also need to know how a word is pronounced if you want to use that word in spoken conversation as well as in written communication. You need to know how the word is used in context, so that you’re able to fit it in where it’s most appropriate. If you study a word’s etymology (its origin and history) then you’ll get information relating to all three of these aspects, and you’ll also learn about related words, which expands your vocabulary even further. Finally, taking the time to learn synonyms (words that have similar meanings) and antonyms (words that mean the opposite) of any word will give you a great deal of flexibility in your ability to communicate with people in a variety of situations. If you pay attention to all of these aspects of English vocabulary study, you’ll get the most benefit out of your study program.

Why Libraries are Good English Vocabulary Resources

May 24, 2011

Since the time of the great Library of Alexandria, which for over three centuries was the central repository for all of the knowledge that had been discovered and collected to date (in a way, it was the internet of the Ancient World), libraries have been places for scholars, students, and anyone curious about anything to find reference materials and the answers they were looking for. Whether written on clay tablets in Assyria, or on scrolls of papyrus in Egypt or silk in China, people recognized the value of keeping permanent records of fact and fiction for future use. Because of the labor involved in creating, cataloging, and storing this information, libraries have performed a vital role in preserving knowledge gained over the years and making it available to a large number of people. Here are four ways that a library can benefit you:

A library has books you’ll enjoy reading. One of the best ways to improve your English vocabulary and have fun at the same time is to read for pleasure. If you’re not sure what type of book you might like, ask the librarian to recommend something, or look at the library catalog (usually on line these days) for a “reader’s forum” where books are grouped by topic. This is a good way to find new books as well.

A library has books containing information you need. One of the best resources that a library provides is the reference section. Not only will you find encyclopedias and dictionaries, you’ll also find instruction manuals, reference books, research studies, and a wide range of technical and topic-specific documents on many subjects. If you don’t find exactly what you’re looking for, ask the librarian for help in requesting information from other libraries – many libraries are connected and share materials, usually for a small fee. If you’re a student working on a research paper or an employee looking to update your skills and resume, the reference section of the library is a valuable resource.

A library has an entire section dedicated to the English language. The Dewey Decimal System is a standard way of classifying materials that is still used by most libraries in their nonfiction/reference sections. Go to any library and look for the shelves of books under the classification “420” and you’ll find information about the history of English and its grammar and spelling, and usually several dictionaries.

A library connects you to the wider world. Not only are there books and magazines written in English on hundreds of different subjects, you can also find materials published in different countries, either in those languages or in translation. Reading what was written by or for other peoples is an excellent way of learning about those lands and cultures. You’ll be presented with new vocabulary and new ways of thinking, and that will help you expand your horizons both in terms of your English skills and your understanding of the global community we all share.

English Vocabulary for Success: A Man of Letters

May 20, 2011

In 18th-century England, it’s likely that less than half of the general public could do much more than sign their name. Those people who had the time, the talent, and most importantly the money to educate themselves and spend their lives reading and writing and studying were often known as “men of letters” (though there were women, if only a few, as part of this group) and were greatly admired. One such man was Horace Walpole, who lived through most of the 18th century in England, a prominent politician, historian, and author. Fans of the 21st-century craze for books featuring supernatural powers and beings (like “Harry Potter” and “Twilight”) might be interested to know that Walpole wrote the very first Gothic novel, titled “The Castle of Otranto.” In his writing and in his love of words, Walpole created or introduced words and added them to the English vocabulary; many of these words we use today, and all are useful to know. Here are some of the words we have from Walpole:

serendipity (seh-rehn-DIP-uh-tee) noun
This word was created by Walpole in 1754, and means “accidental good fortune, a lucky occurrence, an unexpected benefit.”
Example: It was pure serendipity that led Alexander Fleming to isolate the antibiotic penicillin, because if he had cleaned all of his laboratory materials before leaving on holiday, the naturally-occurring mold would have had nowhere to grow.

nuance (NOO-ahns) noun
The first appearance of this word in an English-language text was in a letter written by Walpole in 1781 to Anne, Countess of Upper Ossory. It’s a French word, and the English meaning is the same: a shading, subtlety, or minor but essential detail. The adjective nuanced is often used to describe someone’s speech or persuasive argument.
Example: No matter how well you speak another language, there are nuances in even ordinary conversations that are hard to understand unless you’ve lived in that country for many years.

somber (US) / sombre (UK) (SAHM-burr) adjective
This is another French word that Walpole helped bring into the English language; it means dark, dreary, gloomy, or melancholy.
Example: The great apartment is first; painted ceilings, inlaid floors, and unpainted wainscots make every room sombre. The tapestries are fine, but not fine enough, and there are few portraits. – Walpole, in a letter to George Montagu dated 1760

Increasing your English vocabulary will make you a better writer, because you’ll have a wider selection of words to choose from. As Walpole is credited with saying, “A poet who makes use of a worse word instead of a better, because the former fits the rhyme or the measure, though it weakens the sense, is like a jeweler, who cuts a diamond into a brilliant, and diminishes the weight to make it shine more.” Let your English vocabulary skills shine!

The Trouble With English, Part #3,725: Silent Letters

May 17, 2011

One of the most difficult aspects of English to master is the link – or lack of one – between the way words are spelled and the way they are pronounced. This is a particular problem for people whose first language has fewer ways to pronounce vowels and consonants and combinations of the two. “Silent” letters are ones that appear in the spelling of a word, but not in its pronunciation. Here are some examples of words with silent letters:

muscle
This word has both a silent c and a silent e, and is pronounced MUSS-uhl. However, the related adjective muscular is pronounced MUSS-kyu-luhr, including the hard-c “k” sound when the word is spoken out loud. If you remember both of these words, you’ll remember to spell muscle with a c.

foreign
This is pronounced FOR-ehn, leaving out both the sound of the i and the sound of the g. This pronunciation does not change in the related noun foreigner (FOR-ehn-uhr). This is a particularly difficult word, because you need to remember both of the silent letters and that the e comes before the i for no apparent reason and in contradiction to the often-cited rule “I before E except after C.” Foreign is just one of those words you’ll have to practice until its spelling no longer seems so foreign to you.

through
With three silent letters, the word through (pronounced THROO) can definitely cause you some problems. The o, g, and h are silent in this word; the “oo” sound comes from the u. To make things even more confusing, the word though, which is different only in the lack of an r, is pronounced THO (rhyming with “no” and “show”) rather than THOO as you might expect after looking at through.

knife
The silent k at the beginning of this word, pronounced NIF (with the “i” vowel rhyming with the word “eye”) is a hard one for children to remember, because it makes little sense. However, back when people were speaking Old English, the “k” sound was likely pronounced, perhaps by the famous K-nights of the Round Table.

listen
Listen is pronounced LISS-ehn, with a silent t. A similar word, often, can be pronounced with or without the “t” sound, depending on dialect of English the speaker grew up with.

island
The silent s in island (EYE-lund) is easy to forget. Practice writing the word and saying it out loud, or create a mnemonic trick to remember the s, such as the phrase “Islands Sit in Seven Salty Seas.”

Cross-posted at the Ultimate Spelling blog.

Six Essential Vocabulary Study Program Components

May 16, 2011

If you’re just starting a vocabulary study program, you might not have a clear idea of what you want to learn, whether you have a specific goal or deadline, or how you will organize your studies and achieve your goals. In other words, your study program is at a rather inchoate stage at this point.

Etymology, the history of words, is a very useful part of any vocabulary study program. If we look at the etymology of the word inchoate we find that the word comes from the Latin incohatus, meaning “having been started.” If you know the history of a word, you will also get useful information on its meaning, and on other related words.

English words are classified into categories – nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and so on – that are generally called “parts of speech.” When you first learn a word, make sure you also learn what part of speech the word is. Inchoate is an adjective, a word that is used to describe a noun.

When learning a new word, it’s important to also learn how to spell and pronounce it correctly. Inchoate is pronounced “in-KOH-it.” This is potentially confusing, because many words with the letter pair ch in them contain the “ch” sound, as in the word church. Other words use a “k” sound for the ch letter combination (chiropractor, for example). Be sure you’ve identified the correct spelling as well as the correct pronunciation of a new word so that you can use it effectively in both written and spoken communication.

Of course, a word isn’t very useful until you know what it means! Learning the definition of a word gives you the information you need to use the word correctly in context. The definition of inchoate is “immature, recently started, not yet organized or finished.” Part of learning a word’s definition is learning what other words mean the same thing (synonyms) or have the opposite meaning (antonyms). Learning synonyms and antonyms each time you learn one new word multiplies your vocabulary by that much more. Some synonyms for inchoate are amorphous and rudimentary and two antonyms are mature and developed.

To pull all of the pieces of your word study together, create some examples of how the word is used in a sentence. This gives you practice in using the word correctly, and also helps you make sure you truly understand the word’s meaning. Here’s a sample sentence using the word inchoate:

Example: At the beginning of the year, the school board had only inchoate plans for improving the curriculum, but as the time went on, the teachers and staff were able to work with each other and develop sound policies for the district.

Learn how to effectively shape your vocabulary study program using these six principles, and you’ll get solid results!

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: English Vocabulary and Idioms

May 13, 2011

In May 1770, Marie Antoinette married the future King Louis XVI (she was 14, he was 15). They remained married for over twenty years, until both their lives and their monarchies were brought to an abrupt end during the French Revolution, in 1793. Marie Antoinette’s habit of spending large quantities of money on jewels and frivolous parties is well documented, but the phrase most often associated with her, “If they have no bread, then let them eat cake!” was never actually spoken by her. However, the last part of the phrase has remained with us (unlike Marie Antoinette’s head, which did not remain on her neck). Let them eat cake is now used as an idiom to mean “I don’t care what your problems are.” An idiom is a phrase with a particular meaning that may not be obviously related to the words in that phrase.

The saying “You can’t have it both ways!” is equivalent to the idiomatic expression to want to have your cake and eat it too. It’s impossible to leave a beautifully-decorated, delicious cake untouched on the counter and also enjoy eating a piece of that cake after your dinner. You can use this phrase to describe a situation where two mutually-exclusive things are both equally desirable.

The idiomatic phrase the icing on the cake can be used in both a positive and a negative manner. In either case, this phrase means that after some large event or series of events, something else occurs. Used positively, it means that you’ve done or received everything you wanted, and then were given even more without asking for it (example: “I just found out I have a full scholarship to Harvard, and as the icing on the cake, the graduate department is giving me an office of my own!”). Used negatively, that “even more” refers to something unexpected that made a situation even worse (example: “After a week of storms that tore the roof and siding off my house, learning that my insurance company is raising my rates was just icing on the cake.”).

Something that is extremely easy to accomplish is often described as being a piece of cake, and such tasks are also often said to be as easy as pie. No matter what your preference is for dessert, sit down to a healthy course of vocabulary study, and your life will definitely be sweeter!

The Importance of Daily Vocabulary Study

May 11, 2011

We hope that you’ve set up a study routine that allows you to schedule at least 15 minutes every day for vocabulary practice. Like any skill, your growing ability to use the new and powerful English vocabulary words that you’re learning through the Ultimate Vocabulary program, through this blog, and through your own independent study will gain in depth and solidity by devoting time daily to this practice.

When you look at your calendar to write in your study sessions, you might wonder about the names we have in English for this way of dividing time. Calendars have been used for many thousands of years, in all cultures around the world, from early stone columns to track the seasons and marks on a clay tablet counting the number of days between each full moon to today’s seemingly essential day planners and computerized schedulers. The word calendar comes from the Roman Empire, when the first day of the month (determined by the new moon) was called the calends and was the day that people had to pay the debts they’d accumulated from the previous month. Our word for month traces its roots back to the Old Germanic term for “moon” and we get the word week from the Old English word wice which referred to a change in cycles – in this case, the cycle of seven days that had been established by the Babylonian Empire in the 6th century BCE. Though not often used these days, the word fortnight is a period of fourteen days (two weeks) not necessarily starting on a Saturday or Sunday, but rather just used as a way to mark that length of time.

By practicing how to pronounce, spell, and use words correctly in context, you’ll increase your ability to add those words to your daily conversation and to the written documents you need to be able to produce in order to succeed at work or school. By focusing on all areas of vocabulary development – including the history of a word, and what other words it’s related to – you’ll be able to remember and use the words more easily. Each bit of information related to a word will help fix that word more firmly in your brain. Set up a regular study program, and you’ll be able to measure your improving English vocabulary for years to come!

Did you ever wonder where we got the names for the days of the week?
Monday – “moon day” (Old English ‘monandæg’, from Latin ‘monae dies’)
Tuesday – “Tyw’s day” (Tiw was an Old English god of the sky)
Wednesday – “Woden’s day” (Odin/Woden was the oldest of the Norse gods)
Thursday – “Thor’s day” (Thor was Odin’s son, the god of battle and thunder)
Friday – “Frigg’s day” (Frigg/Freya was Odin’s wife, the goddess of love)
Saturday – “Saturn’s day” (Old English ‘Sæternesdæg’, from Latin ‘dies Saturni’)
Sunday – “sun day” (Old English ‘sunnandæg’, from Latin ‘dies solis’)

Text Messages, Technology, and the Oxford English Dictionary

May 9, 2011

The numbers on a telephone have long been associated with letters of the alphabet, but until relatively recently those letters couldn’t be used to send non-verbal communication over the phone lines. For that matter, it wasn’t all that long ago that phone lines even stopped being required! These days millions of messages are sent, or texted (a neologism added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2004), every day. Texting has joined e-mailing as the primary means of communication, and one that gets information from one person to another much more quickly.

Part of the quickness of these electronic communications comes from the abbreviations used by people to shorten their typing or texting time. Many of these abbreviations are initialisms (see this post for more information about this special category of words). Here are some of the “text-speak” abbreviations or initialisms that are now officially part of the English language:

OMG – oh my god or oh my gosh

BFF – best friends forever

LOL – laughing out loud

IMHO – in my humble opinion

TMI – too much information

While these initialisms are good ways to speed up and shorten your text messages, be careful that you don’t let your use of abbreviated words affect your ability to use and spell them correctly. You might be able to send a quick text to a friend saying, “did u like that video? LOL!” but if you send an e-mail to your boss with the message, “Ur jokes sure had the client laffing out loud today!” you won’t be impressing her with your verbal skills, even if she appreciates the compliment.

We think it’s impossible to have too much information about the continuing evolution of the English language! Keep your eyes open for new words around you, and you’ll be sure to keep up with all of the latest trends in communication.

Study English Vocabulary Any Time of Day (or Night)

May 5, 2011

One of the best tools you can develop in your vocabulary study practice is that of a lively curiosity. If you see a word that you don’t know, or one that looks familiar, or one that catches your eye because of its spelling – or catches your ear because of its sound – then write that word down to look it up later. The English language is full of beautiful, descriptive, and above all interesting words, and the more you learn and use, the more descriptive and interesting your conversation and correspondence will become. Carry a vocabulary notebook with you (or use your Blackberry or iPhone) and make notes about the words you see around you. No matter the hour, you can find a few seconds to keep track of new words. Here are six lovely and poetic nouns for you, all related to times of the day:

gloaming (GLOH-ming)
This word describes the early morning or late evening, when the sky is only dimly lit by the glow of the first rays of the rising sun, or the last of the setting sun (from the Old English glomung).

Low-flowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm’d in the gloaming:
Thro’ the black-stemm’d pines only the far river shines.
– from “Leonine Elegiacs” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

aurora (uh-ROAR-uh)
From the name of the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, this word refers to the moment the sun peeks over the horizon.

Aurora is the effort
Of the Celestial Face
Unconsciousness of Perfectness
To simulate, to Us.
– a poem by Emily Dickinson

noontide (NOON-tide)
The Old English word tid meant “a point in time.” Although it’s less common than it used to be, the word eventide was once widely used, and we still often refer to “the Yuletide season.” Noontide is the middle of the day, when the sun is directly overhead.

I have bedimm’d
The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,
And ‘twixt the green sea and the azur’d vault
Set roaring war.
– from “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare

twilight (TWI-lite)
Twilight is the half-lit time in the early evening when the sun is setting.

The twilight is sad and cloudy,
The wind blows wild and free,
And like the wings of sea-birds
Flash the white caps of the sea.
– from the poem “Twilight” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

crepuscule (kreh-PUS-kuhl)
Just after the sun has set, it’s still light enough to see, but the sky has turned a shade of blue that’s almost black. The French still use this noun to describe this time of day, but in English the adjectival form crepuscular is more common.

Yet name it so ; where Time & weary Space
Fettered from flight, with night-mair sense of fleeing,
Strive for their last crepuscular half-being …
– from the poem “Limbo” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

dusk (DUSK)
An early version of this word was the Middle English word dosk, and was probably used to mean “obscure, dark.” At dusk, as the rays of the sun vanish from the sky, it becomes very hard to see – things become dark and obscure.

Tall and slim and white in the dusk, the girl stood there, hands on the picket gate.
– from “Strange Fruit” by the American author Lillian Smith