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’)