5 ways to upgrade your vocabulary

5 ways to upgrade your vocabulary without sounding like a know-it-all










You know in Cluelesswhen Cher challenge Tai to use one big word a day? Or when DianeCourt makes a dot in the dictionary next to every word she looks upin Say Anything? These are the images that came to mindwhen I realized Saturday was Dictionary Day. If you're tired of using the same old words(me!), here are some easy ways to get all SAT prep on yourself andupgrade that vocab.




Make it a daily habit.
Sign up for Dictionary.com'sWord of the Day. They don't just give dry definitions, theygive context (which your brain needs to retain the newinformation), like usage from literature and current events, aswell as the word's origin.

Be curious.
There's nothing embarrassing about not knowing something. If wecouldn't admit the limits of our knowledge, we'd neverlearn anything! So look up the words you don't know and askyour friends what a word they used means. And you might have to askagain and again. For instance, on a particularly pleasantgirl's weekend recently, apoplectic strangely kept popping into the conversation. I hadto ask twice before I remembered what it meant, but I'd besurprised and, well, apoplectic if I ever forgot itsdefinition again.




Make it fun.
Play word games, like Bananagrams and speed Scrabble.Try crosswords and mad libs. Websites like A Game A Day have word finders,brain teasers, and puzzles. Delight in language, whether it'son the nightly news or in poetry.





Read. And not just blogs.
Words come in and out of fashion, and when we read books fromanother era, we're exposed to language we don't normallycome across in the newspaper. Think the colorful world of JaneAusten: insouciant,reprobate, andaugur. The morekinds of reading you do, whether it be science fiction or Victorianchildren's stories, the greater exposure you have to a varietyof words.





Use it or lose it.
It's kind of like that old saying: if you hear a joke you loveand don't retell it within three days, it will be lost forever.Once you learn the definition to a bright and shiny word, use itASAP. Drop your new word in conversation if the opportunity comesup (don't force it or you risk sounding like, well, aknow-it-all), or in your journal or an email.



:@: