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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
original post
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I spent a good portion of yesterday reading "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells, a classic Sci Fi book from the late 1800's. It was a wonderful book, less than 100 pages in a standand typeface (I read it in a large font edition, so the book was 130+ pages). But this post isn't about the book itself. It's about how many words I didn't clearly know [1], and my rare decision to look up every single one of them.
Those who know me know that I have a decent command of the English language, yet suffer from a curious vocabulary deficiency. Grammar was drilled into me in my youth, but I had done the bare minimum on the vocab side (this would come back to bite me repeatedly in those incessant standardized exams that plagued my adolescence).
I'm not sure what made me decide to painstakingly look up each of these words. I read plenty of books these days, yet have usually just glossed over words whose meaning I didn't completely understand. Whether it be fiction or nonfiction, modern or classic, I could get through a book just fine by inferring the meanings of those words with murky meanings.
Maybe it was because the large typeface made it easy for me to read the book, and hence each of the words. Maybe it was that this typeface let me read a little bit faster than usual, making me feel that I could afford to lose some time looking up words. Maybe it was because the prose was exquisite, and I felt an urge to understand the meaning of all the modern and archaic words that the author had chosen to employ. Maybe, it was just because the book was short and the task wouldn't be unbearably long. Then again, maybe it was the intense afternoon heat of that day.
So I read and read. And I referenced and referenced. I finished the book in the wee hours of the morning, satisfied with my work and melancholy about the story's development. And here it is, as the list that came to be -- all the words that were outside my recognition.
expound
recondite
fecundity
infirmity
spasmodic
accension
humbug
hearthrug
sconce
candlestick
askew
quack
unhinged
therewith
draughty
deportment
jocular
wooden
day week
Tubingen
drawing room
haggard
woolgathering
wont
cadge
peptone
tramp (person)
palpitation
futurity
interstices
petulant
forthwith
incontinent
overset
rhododendron
mauve
verdigris
parapet
girdle
buskin
consumptive (older use)
fretted (stone)
variegated
transverse
hypertrophy
dilapidated
frugivorous
indolent
gesticulate
precipice
derelict
intimate (v.)
rotund
precocious
copula
ameliorate
hither and thither
connubial
gibbous
malachite
rap (to strike lightly)
conveyance
sepulture
decadence
arbor
bower
glade
expostulate
flagstone
pallor
vestige
groping
blunder (movement)
flaxen
lemur
import (significance)
etiolate
cicerone
shirk
halitus
unmeaning
carlovingian
sufferance
practicable
darkling
preternaturally
burrows
faun
bole
scintillating
while away
rill
watchword
perforce
contrivance
down (land)
estuary
oblique
megatherium
deliquesced
slake
camphor
steatite
lignite
ere
insidious
hillock
tumulus
wan
corrugated
boss (protrusion)
palp
liverwort
sable (color)
begrimed
grate
cretaceous
saurian
I don't think I can do this with every book I read; it would simply slow me down too much and soon make my hobby of reading entirely joyless. But this day, I'm glad to have taken up this task, for it has shown me just how little I know and how far I have yet to go in handling this quaint language of ours.
[1] including words that whose meanings I could infer from the prose, but ones that I wouldn't be able to verbalize when facing them standalone.
Addendum:
1) Wow my syntax was really affected by Wells's archaic style. Kinda embarassing how uptight this has come out sounding
2) From Manifesto7
@hkmurakami Very cool idea I will steal. I often take advantage of the ipad touch based dictionary, but I am not sure how much sticks.
Woohoo! 
  
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Interesting - it may be a volume or a genre thing, but when I read the Time Machine I was already aware of a majority of those words and their proper usage. (Fantasy and Science Fiction authors, especially from the early Golden Age, seem to like using such words.) There are a couple words in there that I am surprised someone could miss (wooden?), but then I come from a different educational system to the one that we have had for the past 20 years.
The thing that gets me about The Time Machine (and some other stories of the time) is the third person storytelling perspective as specifically laid out - most of the book is a conversation, with long stretches of only one voice speaking.
Still, a classic piece of science fiction.
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Slake = lake filled with snakes.
Buskin = the pokemon that evolves into Combuskin.
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read the time machine a few times back in middle school. it always bothered me that + Show Spoiler +he lost the poor girl in the woods. and also how at the end, he never came back.
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On June 05 2013 12:44 felisconcolori wrote:
Interesting - it may be a volume or a genre thing, but when I read the Time Machine I was already aware of a majority of those words and their proper usage. (Fantasy and Science Fiction authors, especially from the early Golden Age, seem to like using such words.) There are a couple words in there that I am surprised someone could miss (wooden?), but then I come from a different educational system to the one that we have had for the past 20 years.
The thing that gets me about The Time Machine (and some other stories of the time) is the third person storytelling perspective as specifically laid out - most of the book is a conversation, with long stretches of only one voice speaking.
Still, a classic piece of science fiction.
Jules Verne is a goldmine for that kind of stuff haha. Journey to the Centre of the Earth read more like a science textbook than an adventure novel sometimes.
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awesome list! I'm surprised you didn't know some of those, based on other stuff of yours. but no matter, more things for the brain katamari to roll over. old books are so damn good for not only badass vocab, but also perfect examples of how it can be used in everyday life without being stilted.
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thedeadhaji is not American? A few of these words are pretty standard middle school English stuff here in Japan
expound
fecundity
spasmodic
accension
humbug
hearthrug
candlestick
askew
quack
unhinged
therewith
deportment
jocular
wooden
day week
drawing room
wont
palpitation
futurity
interstices
petulant
forthwith
incontinent
overset
girdle
variegated
transverse
dilapidated
indolent
gesticulate
derelict
intimate (v.)
rotund
precocious
copula
ameliorate
hither and thither
decadence
glade
vestige
groping
import
sufferance
preternaturally
scintillating
while away
perforce
estuary
oblique
insidious
corrugated
grate
cretaceous
Most are definitely interesting: watchword, faun, darkling, carlovingian, expostulate, frugivorous
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On June 05 2013 14:37 momotaro wrote:
thedeadhaji is not American? A few of these words are pretty standard middle school English stuff here in Japan
Yet you'll have a hard time finding a japanese willing to speak english to a gaijin... T_T
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Australia1064 Posts
Once you have learned all of these, read The Canterbury Tales and make another blog. :D
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Your list of words is interesting to me as someone who doesn't read with a dictionary. It's surprising how many words are on my "vague" list, words where I've garnered pieces of meaning from context that I chanced upon. Yet with all the times I've encountered them, I can't give a firm definition without resorting to hand-waving gestures and phrases.
This also bit me on standardized tests:
I missed five questions on the SAT. All in the critical reading section. All of them were analogy/definition questions.
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I've encountered most of them when I was studying for GRE, don't remember most of them any more though haha.
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I'm not sure if expanding your vocabulary with a 19th century novel is necessarily a good way to go. Most of these words are probably outdated and not in use anymore.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 05 2013 13:59 EatThePath wrote:
awesome list! I'm surprised you didn't know some of those, based on other stuff of yours. but no matter, more things for the brain katamari to roll over. old books are so damn good for not only badass vocab, but also perfect examples of how it can be used in everyday life without being stilted.
the thing is, for quite a few of these, I could infer the meaning or had a vague sense of the word but wasn't 100% sure if I had the right meaning. oftentimes I found out that the author was using secondary or tertiary meanings of the words.
my level of syntax is much higher than my level of diction though so I can probably smoke and mirrors you guys and sound pretentious :p
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On June 05 2013 15:44 TOCHMY wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2013 14:37 momotaro wrote:
thedeadhaji is not American? A few of these words are pretty standard middle school English stuff here in Japan
Yet you'll have a hard time finding a jap willing to speak english to a gaijin... T_T
Jap is a derogatory term (then again so is gaijin), just so you know.
And as for Japanese speaking english (and koreans as well), I've found that they commonly learn quite advanced vocabulary... the problem is that they don't learn to actually use it. Hell, I learned the word "constipation" from my korean classmates in Japan, and their English was terrible. Knowing hard words unfortunately does little to help speaking or even comrehension.
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On June 05 2013 18:31 sonigo wrote:
I'm not sure if expanding your vocabulary with a 19th century novel is necessarily a good way to go. Most of these words are probably outdated and not in use anymore.
Except by people that matter.
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On June 05 2013 18:31 sonigo wrote:
I'm not sure if expanding your vocabulary with a 19th century novel is necessarily a good way to go. Most of these words are probably outdated and not in use anymore.
Just expand your vocab to fit your surroundings, if you HAVE TO be in a crowd of pompous people who you know have a certain way of talking, guess you have to learn that stuff (like for work or something).
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H.G. Wells is a really good author. I like his short stories.
I'm surprised to see some of the words you wrote down, but it's good to be honest with yourself with writing words you don't know down. I have done this with some novels, and the words in my list are usually a combination of words I just don't know at all, words I usually think I have a feel for what they mean in context, but don't know the precise meaning of, and words I'm pretty darn sure I know but that I think maybe have another meaning in this case. + words I just think are cool and want to remind myself of even though I already know them. I could post them if you want haha. When I read some translated Mishima books, I learned TONNES of nautical terms. Before I knew sort of generally what a wharf is and where it is and what it's about, but now I actually know what it is and what it's for and how it's defined.
It's good to learn new words tho. Don't just skip over them. There's a lot of times you find out you've missed a surprising amount of what was being said when you leave out a key word. If it's a word you don't know, the author probably chose it carefully. Actually I get that a lot from people who read my own posts -.-
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I face the exact same problem haji.
I picked up an epub of Brave New World in english the other day, had to open a lexicon like 4 times for the first page.
But it's so rewarding when you finish a piece of quality literature without help.
Gotta keep on it.
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I've tried doing this while reading a Clancy novel. I didn't find many words that I outright didn't know, but there were quite a few that, like you said, I'd never seen used in that particular manner. More often, I'd find words that I thought I knew, but really could only offer an educated guess as to their true meaning. It's like when someone asks you the definition of a word that you're sure you know, and you just can't describe it, even though you yourself know what it means.
Little activities like those can really help to boost your overall understanding of the language, even if the words you discover are situational or archaic.
By the way, Hajime, one word you ought to know is cornobble. It means "to hit someone with a fish." I'm sure this knowledge will prove most valuable in your coming days.
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On June 05 2013 19:26 Tobberoth wrote:
Jap is a derogatory term (then again so is gaijin), just so you know.
And as for Japanese speaking english (and koreans as well), I've found that they commonly learn quite advanced vocabulary... the problem is that they don't learn to actually use it. Hell, I learned the word "constipation" from my korean classmates in Japan, and their English was terrible. Knowing hard words unfortunately does little to help speaking or even comrehension.
Gaijin isnt a derogatory term, its an excuse for us to not know kanji stroke order properly and use で and に incorrectly while speaking =)
Im surprised you didn't know all those words considering how well-written you are, but its always good to learn something when you read!
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EPT
