One Word Each Day is a derivation of a system I enlisted to increase my vocabulary and language comprehension while attending college. I majored in philosophy and spent countless hours reading from a gauntlet of challenging authors. Before that time I had been reading quite often and considered myself capable of arresting the theme and intent of any literary work. General word comprehension was not an issue. Thus with the ego and boundless intellectual energy one would expect from a still teenage radical, I dove into the challenge of University level philosophy. I'm sure you can imagine my great shock, when I was confronted by word usage and vocabulary with which I was entirely unfamiliar. Beginning with an unknown word here and there the scripts soon devolved into a deluge of combatively vague terminology and complex terminology that eventually took deprived me of any chance at understanding. Stubborn as I am, I refused to acknowledge the mounting evidence of a deficiency in my knowledge. I coped instead, by employing that old tactic we were all taught in elementary school: guessing at a term's meaning by way of "context clues." This method is entirely effective when one chooses between potential word-meanings on say, a multiple-choice exam. Without such a choice, though, the strategy of using context clues is, actually inimical to true understanding, as guess work is approximate at best. The only thing worse than having no knowledge is having false knowledge. Definition vs. Meaning
I also began to realize that even if I resorted to a dictionary, the result rarely helped foster true understanding of what the author was implying. Word meanings are often layered and complex. The definitions presented by dictionaries do not address the word's past usage, etymological history, metaphorical and symbolic value: its meta-definition. For Example: imagine you hear this exclamation:
"The boss demanded I come in on Saturday, again! Why does he have to be such a N**i?"
If you were somehow unaware of the term "N**i," you might google it and see the following:
Na·zi
ˈnätsē/
noun
historical
noun: N**i; plural noun: N**is
1. a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. a member of an organization with ideology similar to N**ism. derogatory
a person who holds and acts brutally in accordance with extreme racist or authoritarian views.adjectiveadjective: N**i
1. of or concerning the N**is or N**ism. While that is not an entirely false rendering of the term, it cannot connote all the different understandings of the term. Thankfully, I admitted to myself that I was not as educated as I pretended to be and embarked on a program to increase my word knowledge
During each reading session, I underlined any word with whose definition I did not feel extremely comfortable. Afterward, I wrote each word in a small journal then proceeded to study its definition. I would look for the words' usage in actual writing as well. This was an important step; unlike example sentences presented in dictionaries, actual literary usage made use of implied meanings that are important to know. After a semester of this, my vocabulary skills improved immensely and I was able to see concepts in the texts that I would have been completely unaware of otherwise. One Word Each Day is a derivation of that work. I choose the word from my own reading and will often include a excerpt for context. In most cases the words' definition was completely unknown to me, or its meaning was not obvious. Please know that I am not a professional in the language arts, nor do I claim to be an expert. If you can provide further enlightenment on any particular word I present in One Word Each Day, I humbly request you do so via the comments section or by sending me an email at:
[email protected]
I hope you enjoy learning along with me. Justin Arn
