Neither a stress on simplicity, nor an injunction to use only words that you know well should be interpreted as in any way discouraging the reader from getting to know as many words as possible. Words are the tools of the writer's trade. The more of the language a person recognizes and understands, the easier it is to cope with the everyday business of life, and anyone who aspires to be a writer has a duty not only to maximize his or her passive vocabulary but also to extend his or her active vocabulary as far as possible.The key to enlarging both vocabularies is to listen carefully, to read carefully, and to consult reference works frequently. Writers should be alive to the language. When you hear or see a word that you are unfamiliar with, check it out.The first place in which to look is, of course, a dictionary. Even a small dictionary can be helpful, but you will probably benefit from owning a dictionary of the size and scope of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary or The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language or the Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary.If you do not already possess such a work and decide to invest in one, remember at the cash register that you are certainly getting your money's worth. Dictionaries contain a good deal of valuable information in addition to definitions of the senses of words. They will in most cases, for example, tell you how to pronounce the words they list. It may take you a little while to familiarize yourself with the way your dictionary reproduces the various sounds that make up spoken English—there is usually a guide to pronunciation at the front of the book—but the effort is worthwhile. A word only becomes part of your active vocabulary when you know how it is spoken, and English is notorious among foreign learners for the fact that you frequently cannot tell how a word should be pronounced from the way in which it is spelled. This holds good even though you may intend to use a particular word only in writing. If you care about the rhythm of your sentences, if you check the readability of your prose by saying it over inside your head, you need to know how the words you write are supposed to sound and where the stress falls in them. Unless you know that you cannot fully judge the effect they will have on the reader.Dictionaries also tell you a little about the history of individual words. The etymology of a word, to use the technical term, may seem to be of interest only to the specialist. Sometimes, however, a term's history can open up a new vista on a familiar word. Take the word helicopter, for example. Why is an aircraft with a rotating airfoil called a helicopter? The etymology tells us that the word is made up of two elements. These are, though you would not guess it from the way the word is pronounced, helico-, meaning "spiral" (as in helix and helical), and -pter meaning "wing" (as in pterodactyl). You do not have to be a Greek scholar—both elements come from Greek—to find this interesting. Writers need to cultivate a feeling for words. This is partly inborn, like a sense of musical rhythm, but can also be developed by studying words and thinking about their sound and usage. Knowing where words come from and how they are made helps you to appreciate what they are and what they can do. There is, usually, a logic to the way in which words are constructed, and this is in itself a useful thing to remember.Because many complex words are logically constructed, you can enlarge your vocabulary and acquire a better grasp of the inner workings of English not only by learning whole words but also by learning to recognize the parts from which complex words such as helicopter are made. If you find the four letters pter, for example, in any other word, you can deduce that that word must have something to do with wings or flying. Likewise, if you know that the prefixes hem-, hema-, hemato-, and hemo- all mean "blood" or "having to do with blood," you have a first clue to the meaning of a group of words that take up half a column in an average dictionary. Knowing, as you undoubtedly do already, that the suffix -logy means "the study or science of something," you can work out the meaning of the word hematology, even if you have never encountered it before and even if there is no dictionary at hand. Modern dictionaries acknowledge the importance of many of these word elements by providing separate entries for them. Their place in the development of the English language has been discussed earlier. Give them the attention they deserve as part of your effort to get full value from your dictionary.Most people use dictionaries, thesauri, and similar reference works as aids in cases of particular need. They have one question that needs to be answered; when that question has been settled, the book has fulfilled its purpose. But there is much to be said for browsing in such works, when time allows. This is a good way of learning more words and learning more about words. Follow up on cross-references. If you find an interesting synonym for a particular term in a thesaurus, look up the entry for the synonym as well. Your interest in words will grow as you learn more about them. You may even find that the dictionary and the thesaurus become page-turners as exciting as a thriller or a whodunit.Words considered in isolation, however, can only really form part of your passive vocabulary. To activate words, you need to consider them in context. Dictionaries can offer only limited help in enlarging your active vocabulary, but what they do offer should not be ignored. Many dictionaries offer quotations from famous and not-so-famous authors to illustrate how words are used in particular senses. They also provide notes that discuss, for example, the distinctions between words that are close synonyms or words whose usage is controversial. Again, read those quotations and those notes, which often contain further quotations, as part of a policy of squeezing the last drop out of your dictionary. But be prepared to look elsewhere as well.Reading and listening carefully were cited earlier in this subsection as the key to increasing your word power. "Carefully," in this instance, means paying attention not only to the unfamiliar word itself, but to the other words that are used in conjunction with it and to the subject that is being discussed. Let us say, for example, that, along with most Britons, you were attracted by the notion of serendipity and the word itself, and that you wanted to be able not merely to explain what it means and where it came from but to drop it into a conversation or use it in a piece of writing.For all its attractiveness, serendipity, as has been remarked before, is not a particularly easy word to put into context. If you are lucky enough to hear someone say it or to read it in a book, it would help enormously if you could remember or note down the whole sentence in which it appeared. You could then begin your own acquisition of the word for your active vocabulary by if not repeating, then at least imitating that sentence. A sentence such as Can this be serendipity? is not a great deal of help, since you could replace serendipity by a great many other nouns to similar effect, but it is a start. If you heard a person say that such and such a thing or person was discovered by serendipity in a second-hand bookshop / on a trip to Columbus, Ohio / performing in an amateur production of West Side Story, you would have more useful context to build on. If you can say (or write) discovered by serendipity, then you can also say found / came upon / happened upon [etc.] by serendipity. Likewise, if you read that Without such serendipity, the effectiveness of this remedy might never have been known, you have another model sentence that you can adapt for your own purposes: But for serendipity, I might have gone through my whole life without ever knowing the joy of true love.Another way of researching the usage of a word is to type it into a search engine and see what results you get from the World Wide Web. You might wonder, for instance, whether it would be appropriate to use the phrase a piece of serendipity like a piece of luck. One way of finding out whether any other (reputable) writer had ever used it, would be to try to find it on the Web.Once you have a viable context for your word, you can start to think about using it actively. The advice given in the section use words you know still holds good, however. Practice using new words first in communications where it will not matter greatly if you make a mistake. In the days when people frequently exchanged personal letters, these made excellent test beds for writers' new equipment. Modern e-mail is so casual that the sudden appearance of an unusual formal word is perhaps likely to produce the wrong sort of comment. Keep looking out and listening, for once you are alerted to a particular word, it is remarkable how often it seems to present itself to you. Use the new word in practice whenever an opportunity offers, and when you are confident that you have its measure, employ it to the full.
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