I want words smoother than silk, but little do I know.. - by 37637598
37637598 on 19/10/2009 at 03:19
After hours or re-analyzing myself, I realized that a majority percentage of the reason I am so unspoken on a day to day basis, is because my vocabulary holds nothing more than a few plays on common slang, and the basic foundation to an english conversation, although I completely understand plenty more words than I could pull out of my ass during a conversation. I want more.
After literally minutes of searching Google and Yahoo, I still haven't come up with any useful results that pertain to my inquery. I suppose what I'm looking for is a website that challanges my vocabulary every day with new words to practice, that may replace other words I might use on a daily basis. I've tried using a thesaurus to discover synonyms, but the results are always either bland and plain, or they don't seem to fit the context. Such as, another word for mad;
Main Entry: angry
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: being mad, often extremely mad
Synonyms: affronted, annoyed, antagonized, bitter, chafed, choleric, convulsed, cross, displeased, enraged, exacerbated, exasperated, ferocious, fierce, fiery, fuming, furious, galled, hateful, heated, hot, huffy, ill-tempered, impassioned, incensed, indignant, inflamed, infuriated, irascible, irate, ireful, irritable, irritated, maddened, nettled, offended, outraged, piqued, provoked, raging, resentful, riled, sore, splenetic, storming, sulky, sullen, tumultous/tumultuous, turbulent, uptight, vexed, wrathful
Sadly, I could choose any of the longer, less prestige words and pretend I know how to use them in a sentence, but it would be so much easier if someone out there did all of that work for me and simply told me with perspicacity, "This is your word, this is how you use it". I think it would be a great practice that will help re-open my mind after a long binge of smoking weed and just not caring. If nothing else, I can pretent I know what I'm doing when talking to the important, successful people in the future of my career.
Any ideas? Am I stuck with the old method of actually having to read a thesaurus, then a dictionary, then try to find an audio clip of it to reassure my pronunciation?
I already know I'm an idiot, that was established every day of my childhood, but I believe you can fix stupid! Or at least I can.
Aja on 19/10/2009 at 03:23
I think it would be a good idea for you to read novels. And when you come across a word you don't know, you should look up the word. And you should try and remember it. That's what I do and look at my good vocabulary.
Tocky on 19/10/2009 at 03:36
That's what I was going to say, Aja. You have vexed me into paroxysms of splenetic verbosity from which I may never recover.
Oh wait, screw that shit.
37637598 on 19/10/2009 at 03:37
I like that idea, and I've always wanted to start reading again, but ever since I was little, as much as I love reading, I've been very slow at it. I'm not sure why my reading speed never caught up with me as I grew into more advanced books, I can usually even write faster than I can read. That's why I gave up on reading novels, as soon as I got a job and moved into my own place. I lost a lot of free time because of it.
Now my time is so slim, It's hard to find 5 minutes for a coffee. I work from 9am to about 10pm every night, and I volunteer for many different things on a daily basis, so I have zero days off. At night after work, I have just enough time to work out, check my e-mail, work on side projects, and go to bed. I could put time aside to read, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be enough to keep my interest in any book, because of the gaps inbetween reading, and the time I would have to spend looking up such words I don't fully understand.
In respect to your suggestion, I just don't have the time to put aside yet. Even now I'm working on 3 different things, none of which I can replace. If you do suggest a good book though, I'll buy it the first chance I get. I really like books that stretch my imagination beyond anything a once acid crazed musical genius freak could think of.
frozenman on 19/10/2009 at 03:52
You should check out the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges- Labyrinths is a modern excellent collection. Not only will he press you to look up some new words (i.e. gnostic cosmogeny) but the sheer density and effectiveness of his words will likely give you +3 Vocab Implementation. Plus some of the stories are unbelievably trippy and infinite.
Scots Taffer on 19/10/2009 at 03:52
TTLG vexes me greatly as of late.
Tocky on 19/10/2009 at 03:52
Until we develop plug in memory cards for our brains books are it. You cannot crib your mind. I wouldn't worry so much about speed. You don't want to skim across words like a speedboat anyway. It should be more of a fishing trip where you get to take home your catch except that your catch eats you. Go check out the reading thread. Lots of quality selections suggested there.
LOL Scots.
demagogue on 19/10/2009 at 05:37
Novels are good. But I also find reading the newspaper or news magazine every day helps my vocabulary, though more like the New York Times or The Economist than something like my local old home-town paper. The other thing you'd want to do is actually use the words you learn in conversation.
Going to the root of your original issue, though, vocabulary is still just half the battle. You'll probably find you have more to say when you start forming interesting opinions about things going on. That's another way that reading the newspaper everyday helps. If it's good writing and good thinking, it should evoke good thinking on your part about topical stuff that you could share with people. And good thinking and good language work together, I think. When you have sophisticated vocabulary at hand, you can form your thoughts in more sophisticated ways; and when you have more sophisticated thoughts, it will lead you to more sophisticated vocabulary to try to express them.
Aerothorn on 19/10/2009 at 08:14
This actually came up the other day in a class of mine.
One women (who, like you, is short on time) says she rides novels online, using one of the many programs (or Firefox plug-ins, or whatever she is using) that look up words when you click on them. That way, she doesn't have to spend time digging out the dictionary. Personally, I don't like reading on screens, but if you don't mind that this may be a good idea. Some authors are better for vocab than others, of course - personally, I think Neal Stephenson tends to have some good vocab, particularly in his later works.
That aside, there *are* word-a-day services (dictionary.com has one, though I imagine there are plenty of others). Maybe sign up for a few different ones. It's slow, but it's a start.
