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The words you use say a lot about you. Knowing which words to use and understanding how to use them are both key to communicating effectively and accurately. People often say in frustration, “I know what I mean, but I don’t know how to say it.” If the right words aren’t there, the right ideas can’t get through. Your vocabulary is the foundation of your ability to share your thoughts with other people. When you improve your vocabulary, you improve your ability to bring your intelligence and ideas to bear on the world around you.
When people say that someone has a “good vocabulary,” they usually mean that he or she uses a lot of important-sounding words—words like jactitation, demulcent, and saxicolous. But a vocabulary consisting of words like these isn’t necessarily a “good” vocabulary. Why?
Because almost no one knows what jactitation, demulcent, and saxicolous mean. If you used these words in conversation, chances are no one listening to you would know what you were talking about. Big, difficult words have important uses, but improving a vocabulary involves much more than merely decorating your speech or your writing with a few polysyllabic zingers.
The goal of communication is clarity. We write and speak in order to make ourselves understood. A good vocabulary is one that makes communication easy and efficient. One mark of an effective speaker or writer is his or her ability to express complex ideas with relatively simple words.
Most discourse among educated people is built on words that are fairly ordinary—words you’ve heard before, even if you aren’t exactly certain what they mean. The best way to improve your vocabulary isn’t to comb the dictionary for a handful of tongue twisters to throw at unsuspecting strangers. Instead, you need to hone your understanding of words that turn up again and again in intelligent communication. A person who has a clear understanding of every word in an issue of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal would have a powerful vocabulary—a vocabulary sophisticated enough to impress almost any teacher, admissions officer, colleague, or employer.
An effective vocabulary is one that enables you to convey ideas easily. Do you know what inveterate means? Do you know the difference between flaunt and flout ? Do you know why an artist might be insulted if you called his or her work artful ?
None of these words is particularly difficult. But each has its own meaning or meanings. If you misuse these words, you communicate that you are in over your head.
When people get into trouble with words, it usually isn’t because they don’t know the meaning of a seldom-used word like termagant but because they are confused about the meaning of a much more common word—a word they hear, read, and even use with regularity.
Take the word peruse, for example. Many people think that it means “skim” or “glance over.” However, it also means verynearly the opposite. To peruse can also mean toread very carefully.
The number of words you know is less important than the care you take in learning the ones you really use. Speaking or writing well doesn’t require an enormous vocabulary—but it does require a confident one. And the way to gain confidence in your vocabulary is to buckle down and learn the words you need to make yourself clearly understood.
The philosophy behind The Princeton Review is simple: We teach what you need to know and try to make it interesting and fun at the same time. In preparing students for various standardized tests, we spend much of our time working on vocabulary. Despite what many people think, many “intelligence” or “aptitude” tests are largely tests of vocabulary. The students who earn high scores on such tests are the students who know the right words. The success of our method is in part a result of our success in teaching vocabulary.
The methods we have developed are easy to use and, we believe, extremely effective. There’s nothing particularly startling about them because they rely mostly on common sense, but they do work. And although they were developed primarily for students, these methods can be used by anyone who wants to build a stronger, smarter vocabulary.
This book is divided into three main sections. In Chapter 1 , we describe some basic principles of vocabulary building. We also explain techniques for learning new words. You should apply these techniques as you work through the rest of the book. The more carefully you work, the more rapidly you’ll enhance your ability to use words effectively.
The heart of Word Smart is Chapters 2 and 3 . Chapter 2 is the largest section of the book, containing all of the words we think the savvy student should know. Each word is accompanied by a definition and one or more examples intended to help you understand how to use the word properly. Many entries also include discussions of related words as well as additional meanings or associations. Scattered throughout the book are quick quizzes that will help you strengthen your vocabulary skills and assess your progress as you work. The answers to these quick quizzes are found in Chapter 13 .
Chapter 3 consists of “The Final Exam” covering all the words in Chapter 2 . You can use this test to help firm up your new vocabulary knowledge and to help ensure that you’ll retain all the new words you’ve learned. You can also use the test as a diagnostic tool. By trying your hand at the questions before working your way through the book, you’ll give yourself a good idea of which words cause you the most trouble. And if you’re preparing for a major standardized test such as the SAT or GRE, you and your friends can use the Final Exam as a handy review device. All of the answers to the drills in this section can be found in Chapter 13 .
The third and final section of this book, Chapters 4 through 12 , contain specialized lists of words, including need-to-know words for the SAT and GRE. These lists, which contain the most frequently tested (or appearing) words on the SAT and GRE, are the ones we use to help students boost their verbal scores on these exams. Sometimes simply knowing that a particular word is included on one of these lists is enough to lead students to a correct answer on the test.
Other specialized lists include frequently misused words, useful foreign words and phrases, common abbreviations, and words associated with science, finance, and the arts. If you learn the words on these lists, you’ll improve your reading comprehension as well as increase your understanding of various disciplines.
Don’t try to read this book in a single sitting. You’ll learn much more if you tackle it a little at a time. You may feel comfortable with a number of the words already. You don’t need to spend much time on those, but be certain you really do know a word as well as you think you do before you skip ahead. Some of the most embarrassing vocabulary blunders occur when we boldly misuse words we feel certain we understand.
The words in Word Smart are arranged alphabetically. You’ll find a Quick Quiz every 10 words or so. You may find it convenient to tackle words in the main list in 10-word chunks, pausing at each Quick Quiz to make certain you have retained what you just learned. Don’t forget to check your answers.
If you’re trying to build your vocabulary in preparation for a test, you should set a schedule for yourself and work methodically from beginning to end. If you’re simply trying to improve your vocabulary, you may find it more interesting to dip into the text at random. You can also use the book as a companion to your dictionary to zero in on the meanings of new words you’ve encountered in reading or in conversation.
When you finish this book, you will have a solid vocabulary that can help you in every facet of your life—studying in a classroom, communicating at work, even kicking back with a book on your couch. But don’t stop there. Continue to expand your vocabulary by mastering the new words you encounter.
Let’s begin!