Improving Vocabulary Blog.ORG

People often confuse with words and they try to extract meaning of the word by its etymology. For example consider trying to extract the meaning of the word pacify. People often confuse with the word pacify and pacifier. Unhappy babies are given pacifier to make them stop crying. To soothe anger or agitation or to subdue by armed action is the relevant meaning of the word pacify. Pacifist is a person who opposes war and violence generally on religious and moral grounds.

There exists a significant danger in trying to decipher meaning of words based on etymology. Etymology will not give you exact meaning of the word for every word. There exists a contradiction trying to predict the meaning of the word by its etymology. It would be better to know the meaning of the word by its root or origin.

Many people even literates think that meanings are the same in all languages and it varies according to the form in which we use it. Consider this sentence “The vodka is all right, but the meat is bad”. This sentence when translated into Russian by computer software gives out the meaning as “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. Languages are different and they need planned preparation.

There are various different and typical patterns of relationships between words in different languages. Chamois (French) = Italian camoscio, English re-proof = French re`imperme`abiliser. This confusion or ambiguity occurs when words which are related to concepts are firmly grounded into reality. Conceptual knowledge is not the same and it is never identical to our knowledge about meanings.

For example native English speakers (mother tongue) define or speak about wearing with one verb put on, whereas this is not the case with other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, etc. They have an elaborate form of representation for lower clothing, upper clothing, watches, etc. This form of understanding by English learners will make them know the intricacies and the manner in which native English speakers speak English.

English distinguishes streams from rivers but the French distinguishes rivers which run into the sea from rivers which are tributaries of other rivers. These are some of the different contexts in which English language varies from other languages. People from dissimilar cultures find learning English difficult due to problem in cross linguistic equivalences. Even words which may appear to be correct in related languages but they might be wrong grammatically in particular contexts.

Vocabulary is a tough and difficult subject. Even learned persons have difficulty in using vocabulary in right context. Vocabulary not only deals with meaning of the sentence and word in right place but also usage. It is important to learn the meaning of the word and its context in right place. There are certain words which used in appropriate place create a paradox which is irrelevant to the sentence or relevant to the sentence.

Podcast a famous word in recent times has become popular after apples IPod. This word will be included in the next edition of New Oxford American Dictionary. This word is taken from the word broadcast and apples IPod, both of these words combined to form the famous word Podcast.
The word pococurante was the last word spelled by Sai Gunturi (13 year old) of Dallas. Sai Gunturi won the 76th Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee on Thursday. Pococurante means indifferent or nonchalant.
Words such as medireview are not included in dictionary but it is used pre dominantly by technical people. It is a by product of filtering software which changes eval to review to stop cross site scripting. This is used by Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo security filters use this word pre dominantly.

Exoplanet is another word which is predominantly used in space related research bibliography. Exoplanet is not recognised by dictionaries but it is used. Scientists say that there might be hundreds of exoplanets in the earth.

There are other various different terms which have different meaning in different dictionaries such as Jihad, Jangaweed, etc. One of the most difficult things is describing the miscreants with the word jihad. Jihad has religious significance and terrorists described as persons with religious background will increase their identity rather than portraying them as people with insane beliefs. Jangaweed is another terms which is described as a “man with a gun on horse” which does not apply in reality. These jangaweed`s are immoral people who loot, grab and steal property from legitimate legal users.

There are various words which obtain different meanings in different contexts. Meaning of the word changes according to the context in which it is applied. Presence of different types of English such as British, American, Pacific, etc changes the usage and written form of certain words. Slangs also affect the sentence structure and its applied meaning.

There are various other terms which are not even present in dictionary but are widely used by technical and general public. These and many more words are present in electrical, technical and electronic industry.