Building your vocabulary. @ Sythe @ Finn

I've noticed that your knowledge of vocabulary is better than the average person. Do you guys have any suggestions on what can be done to improve your vocabulary?

I don't feel like I'm learning much in school so I wanna take it into my own hands. Although I do lack in vocabulary, I know 4 languages, so my vocabulary is spread out.

Looking forward to your replies. Other people can reply too. >_<

 

School is probably your best bet. Not to mention reading every book you own, buying more books, library. Reading, but school first.

 

i dont have suggestions but i know youll find a job plenty of them for people with four languages

 

That would be the obvious solution.
Thanks though. >_<

 

You can sign up with dictionary.com to receive the word of the day, then find ways to use it throughout the day. This has proved very beneficial to me and has expanded my vocabulary with just a few minutes each day.

 

Enhanced vocabulary will come as you develop your understanding of the language.
As one poster said, read books.

 

Improving your vocabulary can be a strenuous task for some and an absolute breeze for others. However there is one very simple way to bolster your vocab.
Simply analyze the sentences you write, and pick out specific adjectives (describing words) in your sentences.

Once you've chosen your words, simply go to thesaurus.com and enter your words. This will give you synonyms for your chosen words. What this enables you to do is simply expand on your pre existing vocabulary with different words of the same meaning you already know.

Sometimes however 'fancy' vocab have very little synonyms to commonly used words, for example 'bifurcate.' Granted there are still some synonyms for this word it isn't a commonly used word at all, and the meaning eludes most people. However the only way to expand your vocabulary in order to incorporate these rarely used words is essential.

TL;DR - Type common adjectives into a thesaurus and learn the words you don't know.

 

On top of the previous suggestions you could always try reading works of literature or just anything in general which uses an extensive vocabulary.

 

I suggest that you bypass these superficial elements of speech.
sure they do make your post look more impressive to someone reading it over the first time but it becomes less impressive when you view it with a critical eye. one thing i have noticed is that most of the most eloquent essays written are also the most easy to pick apart with logical arguments.

"When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away. When far away, we must make him believe we are near."
thus, in a war of words, an eloquent tongue and a diverse lexicon only implies that their argument may be lacking in reasoning. (i hope someone got the irony)

bifu/rcate
there, i have bifurcated the word bifurcate.
i was surprised that my guess of the meaning of bifurcate was right when i looked it up.

 

I really like this. Thanks. I'm defiantly going to try this.

 

Set some kind of goal of how many words you want to learn a day, two for example. Start slow, but if two isn't challenging enough raise the bar.

When I had to study for exams I found these techniques online. I wrote down every word in the course of the day that was unfamiliar, also I kept a note in my head of things I heard on tv, newspapers, and such. Context is very helpful. When you have time, look at the dictionary with words you wrote down and look for words with the same root family, after you understand the noun it will be easier to learn and memorize adjectives and verbs from the same family.

Thesaurus are great ways of learning words too, like someone else said.

Good luck, that's just my input. Hope it helps.

 

Key is to never give up reading, whether online, in magazines, books, or anywhere you can think of!

 

get an sat vocab book? those are useful

 

Read books.

 

I don't have a very good vocabulary, but I try to expand it as much as I can. I do that by just reading shit online and googleing all the words I don't know

 

Using words in an attempt to be ostentatious is nothing short of pretentious.

 

Use a thesasuras if you're lookin for better words.
I do admit, I was reading one of Finn's threads and I had to google about 6 words.
My vocabulary has improved a lot because of the Internet.

 

Why the need, microsoft does it for me. XD

 

Haha.

At OP, you just need to pay attention when other people talk/write/type. If you actually pay attention and concentrate on the context of what they used the word in, then you will start to catch on to various new words.

 

Haha. >_<

Thais for all the replies. A lot of them have been very similar, I'm looking fir some different answers.