Tips to Understanding Words You Haven't Seen Before

We all come across words that we haven't seen before or don't really understand. If you have a dictionary nearby, that's very handy, but that's not always the case. You may even have a friend like I do who uses really unusual, uncommon words that no one - aside from academics and, well, him - use in everyday conversation. 

Basically, the more you read, the larger your vocabulary will become, which is a very good thing, because it will also make your writing better. You will learn to use words that express your meaning neatly and concisely. For example, instead of saying, "arrogant and boastful", you can use awesome words like, "swaggering".

Incidentally, this word is also a great example of how popular culture MESSES UP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. For those of you that might not know, "swag" is an extremely annoying slang word that today generally means "cool", especially in the context of looking cool. Now compare that to what "swagger" actually means. The moral of the story here is if you are unsure of the meaning of a word, DO NOT USE SLANG AS YOUR GUIDE. There's a reason it's called slang.

Now that I have that out of my system...

1) Look at the parts of the word individually.

Example: triangulate

Part One: tri

Part Two: angulate

2) Compare the parts of the word to other words that you already know.

Example: triple, tricycle, tripod, triad, trident

All of these words refer to things with three. Based on that, you can infer that the word "triangulate" does as well.

3) Look for root words.

Example: triangulate

What other words does this word look like? In this case, it looks like the word "triangle", i.e. obviously something with three angles and three sides.

4) Look at the context. If you remember nothing else, remember to examine the context.

Example: "Triangulate the signal!" (For all you police procedural drama watchers out there.)

In the context of this sentence, what role does the word play? Is it a noun (i.e. person, place, or thing)? Is it a verb (i.e. an action)? Is it an adjective (i.e. describing a person, place, or thing)? Is it an adverb (i.e. describing an action)?

In this case, it's a verb, i.e. an action.

Therefore, it's implicit that "to triangulate" means to make a triangle by connecting three points.

If you know other languages, that can help you as well, especially German (English is a Germanic language) and Romance languages (i.e. Latin-based languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian). The word "renaissance", for example. The clue here is "naissance", which is French for "birth". From there it's not hard to work out that it means "rebirth".

So, the recap:
1) Look at the the parts of the word individually
2) Compare the parts of the word to words you already know
3) Look for root words
4) Look at the context - extremely important!