Figuring Out What a Word Means, a la Shmoop.
Ever stumble upon a word that looks like somebody’s cat walked across the keyboard?
“That can’t possibly be a real word,” you say to yourself.
You’ve been reading since you were three, and this nasty little conglomeration of letters
has never reared its ugly head before now.
Or maybe you’ve seen it before but always ignored it…
…hoping it would just go away, like a scab that you resist picking for a week.
Well, we’ve got news for you.
Every word…
no matter how obscure or funny-looking… is there for a reason.
The writer took pains to find exactly the right way to express her thoughts…
…and by skipping it, you may be missing out on an entire layer of meaning.
Trust us, if it’s cold outside, you don’t want to be depriving yourself of any layers.
So…
here are five quick tips for figuring out what a word means.
We swear it won’t be painful, so no need to be a quakebuttock.
Tip Number One – Context Counts When you encounter a word that makes you feel
like you’re reading something in Arabic…
…there’s a good chance you can make an educated guess about the word’s meaning
based on its context.
The context is basically everything that surrounds the word... the sentence and paragraph that
contain it.
You may not know what a “fabulist” is, but if the person being described that way
is known for telling tall tales, you might be able to get the general sense of the word.
Tip Number Two – Part of Your Word Here’s another new word for you… morphology.
No, not the study of Transformers.
Morphology involves using the parts of a word to decipher its meaning.
For starters, the ending morpheme of a word can help you identify its part of speech.
Like… “saporous” might be a stranger to you, but because it ends in O-U-S, you
can bet your bottom dollar that it’s an adjective.
Let’s say you know the word “glamorous.”
It probably doesn’t mean the same thing as “saporous,” but it almost certainly
plays the same role in a sentence.
Tip Number Three - The Power of Position.
If someone is standing, she’s probably not sleeping.
If she’s standing on her head, she’s probably doing yoga.
Or taking extreme measures to get rid of her hiccups.
As you can see, positions are pretty helpful when trying to figure out what’s happening
in a given situation.
We can generally tell what part of speech a word is based on its position in the sentence.
For example, in English, subjects… and therefore nouns… usually come at the beginning of
a sentence.
Tip Number Four – Articulating Articles When we say “article,” we’re not referring
to the latest exposé on corruption in Chicago politics.
Nope… we’re talking about little words like “a” and “the”… those little
suckers that only appear before nouns or nouns being modified by adjectives.
You can’t say “a sing” or “a write.”
Well, you can, but not without getting funny looks.
By spotting an article before an unknown word, you can be sure that the word in question
is a noun.
Tip Number 5 – Brain to the Rescue You don’t give your brain enough credit.
Which isn’t wise, because if your brain is feeling unappreciated, it might make you
do something stupid or crazy, and embarrass you in front of a whole lot of people.
It has that power.
Your brain has seen a lot of words in its lifetime.
Sometimes, just be seeing a word, your brain might have some inkling as to what it means.
It’s been around the block.
So if your brain is telling you something, don’t disregard it.
If you do, don’t blame us the next time it makes you walk smack into a glass door.
Quick Tip Review, and then we’ll send you on your merry way…
That’s it!
You made some good tips today.
And you didn’t have to wait on a single table.