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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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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 japanese willing to speak english to a gaijin... T_T
I didn't mean that as an insult. I was only a bit surprised how someone who could write English fluently not know some of the words which I learned in middle school. For example, corrugated steel, cretaceous era, indolent, and others seem fairly common in books, magazines, newspapers, and other reading materials.
To Archas, thanks for "cornobble", I need to find a use for this word soon :p
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On June 05 2013 22:57 momotaro wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2013 15:44 TOCHMY wrote: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 I didn't mean that as an insult. I was only a bit surprised how someone who could write English fluently not know some of the words which I learned in middle school. For example, corrugated steel, cretaceous era, indolent, and others seem fairly common in books, magazines, newspapers, and other reading materials. To Archas, thanks for "cornobble", I need to find a use for this word soon :p
I wasn't insulted it's ok!
I guess they're just shy.
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Really, "wooden"? As in "made from wood"?
Also you really should know "flagstone", considering that it's part of the twilight tileset in Broodwar (the dark blue/black stuff).
Not knowing "unhinged" shows that you don't play MTG.
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I'm doing this with 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson and estuary was one of the first words on my list.
There's a ton of words on that list that I recognize but I'm not completely sure what they mean. Like askew (not straight?), mauve (a colour, maybe dull yellowish orange?), deportment (the way someone carries themselves physically?), haggard, fecundity and a few more.
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This reminds me of those awful exercises back when I was a kid in school. "Read the text and look up the unknown words." (words from my native language) We had to write them down along with their definitions to prove that we actually did it. -_-'
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On June 05 2013 16:27 kjwcj wrote:
Once you have learned all of these, read The Canterbury Tales and make another blog. :D
Below is the opening few lines of the Canterbuy Tales. This was produced from memory as I was required as a lad to memorize them when we first studied it in High School.
Whan that Aprille with its shoures soote
The drogthe of March had pierced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in switch licour,
Of which vertu engendered is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth,
Inspired hath, in every holt and heeth,
The tendre croppes and the yonge sunne,
Hath in the Ram his half course y-ronne.
Yes it is all spelled weird (Middle English, yo!), I probably spelled most of it wrong, but the gist of it should be there.
Some notes on pronunciation if you are trying to read it:
-The lines do flow a bit if you are pronouncing the words correctly.
- Words like roote, soote have the 'e' at the end pronounced as an 'eh' sound. So "root-eh" for roote.
- Bathed, Inspired should be read as bath-ed (emphasis on the ed) and Inspir-ed (emphasis on the ed). Same with shour-es (emphasis on the es).
The entire text is nearly unreadable if you don't have a real translation nearby. (What is shoures, soote, drogthe, etc?) I do remember most of what this passage is about see below for my (AWFUL) attempt to bring it into modern prose. I have some () remarks in there for you to help understand what is going on there.
When April's sweet showers
Have pierced the drought of March,
And bathed every root in such liquor (1)
Of which virtue engendered is the flower. (2)
When Zephirus (3) comes with his sweet breath,
Inspiring in every wood and hearth,
the young flower shoots and the young sun,
Have in the Ram (4) their half course run. (5)
(1) Such liquor = aka water for the flowers after the drought.
(2) Basically this is a convoluted phrase saying "When the middle of April has come". He is being flowery in the language here and thus all the talk about the flower of virtue and what not.
(3) Zephirus is the greek god of wind also spelled Zephyrus, the latter is more common these days for whatever reason.
(4) He's talking about Zodiac signs here (the Ram).
(5) The Ram's sign is about halfway over in the middle of April. Hence when "the Ram's half course is run", you are in the middle of April.
A lot more in there than you thought eh? Canterbury Tales is a lot of fun to read, but certainly not for those eager for a quick read. A lot of the stories in there are rather bawdy (especially for the time) and are pretty funny if you know the context. The Prologue alone is quite long, let alone the whole of the Tales itself.
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On June 05 2013 13:54 RuskiPanda wrote:Show nested quote +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.
I agree. I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I was amazed at how much time he spent describing the underwater life. I actually skimmed/skipped these parts because I couldn't handle all the scientific jargon he was using. I found these sections to be incredibly boring and after I skipped them, I could enjoy the book.
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i always wanted to look up words while reading but was too lazy, but thanks to the invention of ereaders my live changed drastically for reading. I was able to download books instantly (and sometimes for free!), i could carry around a ton of books in one little light weight thing (i usually have at least one non fiction and one fiction book on the go) and i can instantly look up any word i dont know with the built in dictionary. Absolutely love being able to do that.
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Wow this is so weird to me, everyone is saying how much work it is to look up words they don't know. I thought it was commonplace to do this. I have always done this, I thought it was standard to look it up if you didn't know. Its very interesting to me that most people do not do this.
I guess this might be my reason for excelling in vocab and failing in grammar. I can tell you a thrilling story with amazing syntax and vocab, that is full of run-on sentences and fragments, with comma's strewn about as if they were sprinkles on my cupcake story.
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Okay, at first I thought this was Haruki Murakami's blog. I was awestruck. But now it seems more realistic. Good on you for looking up those words!
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On June 06 2013 09:57 Divinek wrote:
i always wanted to look up words while reading but was too lazy, but thanks to the invention of ereaders my live changed drastically for reading. I was able to download books instantly (and sometimes for free!), i could carry around a ton of books in one little light weight thing (i usually have at least one non fiction and one fiction book on the go) and i can instantly look up any word i dont know with the built in dictionary. Absolutely love being able to do that.
Dictionaries can be silly though. I don't want to read a two line description of a bird. I want a picture and maybe a map of its habitat.
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On June 06 2013 09:40 DenTenker wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2013 13:54 RuskiPanda wrote: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. I agree. I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I was amazed at how much time he spent describing the underwater life. I actually skimmed/skipped these parts because I couldn't handle all the scientific jargon he was using. I found these sections to be incredibly boring and after I skipped them, I could enjoy the book.
The problem with reading Jules Verne in any language other than French, is that his books have often been horrendously translated to other languages, because of the scientific jargon. Also, for 20,000 leagues under the sea, the classification of the fish is completely different from modern ichthyological taxonomy, due to the fact that it was written in the 19th century.
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Haji, Have you read Heart of Darkness? If not, Conrad was a pole, who spoke english as his 3rd(?) language. Some of the most complex english vocabulary in a novel i have ever read.
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On a side note, The Time Machine was (in my opinion) an incredibly bizarre and nonsensical book. I didn't like it at all.
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Excuse me but what do you mean by "day week"?
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On June 06 2013 22:33 Silencioseu wrote:
Excuse me but what do you mean by "day week"?
Probably as in "4-day week" or stuff like that. Meaning 4 work days and 3 days off. I'm hard pressed to think of other uses. That one isn't in dictionary.com tho.
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The task becomes much easier if you own electronic dictionary with word list function. Though I haven't used it for while, the device still contains fascinating words as:
+ Show Spoiler +gyrate
enjoin
vernacular
succor
imbibe
marplot
sangfroid
confabulation
propound
ineffable
vacillate
groundswell
winsome
waylay
risible
vitiate
abut
prevaricate
vertiginous
travail
sententious
inculcate
salubrious
diffident
pusillanimous
execrable
temerity
doughty
rigmarole
vignette
truculent
augur
resplendent
shambolic
threnody
actuate
palaver
obloquy
piquant
perfunctory
imbroglio
parlance
promulgate
propitious
Not sure how many of them are common vocabulary. I mean, I guess it depends on person to person due to differing backgrounds.
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On June 05 2013 16:27 kjwcj wrote:
Once you have learned all of these, read The Canterbury Tales and make another blog. :D
I second this motion.
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I learned "archaic" from this blog. =)
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You didn't know "candlestick" before this?
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United States47024 Posts
On June 05 2013 18:47 thedeadhaji wrote:
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
You're well schooled in the art of sounding pretentious, certainly. 
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I can usually get by using only context clues to understand the meaning words i don't know. But I've made it a habit to crosscheck the dictionary because it provides a much richer understanding. When i was a freshman in highschool i read some of Ralph Waldo Emerison's Essays. He uses really long sentences separated with commas and laden with big words. It was really hard using context to derive their meaning, because he used them exactly. When I went over the sentence again with updated vocabulary the sentence made so much more sense and it was a much better read. Least of all, this is a really good habit to have.
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On June 08 2013 04:26 Soymilk wrote:
You didn't know "candlestick" before this?
I didn't either...
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You'd think it was pretty straightforward, "candle" + "stick" :p
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ya those boks are tough :/ i remember reading game of thrones and Tywin said something like, "get some faggots for the fire" and i was so blown away and knew that there must be an alternate definition. Cause how ridiculous would it to be that for the scene for him to just be sending people in to fuel the fire haha. i was blown away. for those that don't know faggots is a bundle of sticks or twigs.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 08 2013 11:47 Hesmyrr wrote:
You'd think it was pretty straightforward, "candle" + "stick" :p
always thought it was referring to the candle inself, not the holder :O
Maybe it's b/c I grew up with Candlestick Park since I was little and preconceptions had formed at a really early age. In this book, the context told me that the word was used to refer to the holder of the candle, so I had to look it up and as a result I found out that I had the wrong definition of the word for the last 20 years!
I'm more than happy to find out and admit to my shortcomings of knowledge since it's the truth after all and it's not like I have to come off as if I'm a learned man online (unlike certain rl social functions... ugh), especially if I learn as a result
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 05 2013 21:53 Steveling wrote:
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.
Loved Brave New World!
It's what got me started on this Sci Fi craze over the last year. Could you believe that I never read books outside of class growing up, not even Sci Fi? Now I read ~50 books a year!
On June 05 2013 22:30 13_Doomblaze_37 wrote:Show nested quote +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!
Gaijin really is a derogatory word. (ask mani) It means "not one of us". To be treated as 'not one of us' is painful if you're say an Indian dude or White dude who's lived in Japan for say 20 years. "From a different country" is gaikokujin.
On June 05 2013 22:57 momotaro wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2013 15:44 TOCHMY wrote: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 I didn't mean that as an insult. I was only a bit surprised how someone who could write English fluently not know some of the words which I learned in middle school. For example, corrugated steel, cretaceous era, indolent, and others seem fairly common in books, magazines, newspapers, and other reading materials. To Archas, thanks for "cornobble", I need to find a use for this word soon :p
Never read as a kid growing up!!
I was so slow at reading and it was so painful that I'd often resort to spark notes. I even spark notes'ed the latter half of Fereignheit 451 in 9th grade. I reread (?) it this year and it was a fantastic book. God I was so ignorant back then...
On June 06 2013 01:00 spinesheath wrote:
Really, "wooden"? As in "made from wood"?
Also you really should know "flagstone", considering that it's part of the twilight tileset in Broodwar (the dark blue/black stuff).
Not knowing "unhinged" shows that you don't play MTG.
I think it was using the third meaning here
1.
consisting or made of wood; wood: a wooden ship.
2.
stiff, ungainly, or awkward: a wooden gait.
3.
without spirit, animation, or awareness.
4.
dull or stupid.
On June 06 2013 10:05 jcroisdale wrote:
Wow this is so weird to me, everyone is saying how much work it is to look up words they don't know. I thought it was commonplace to do this. I have always done this, I thought it was standard to look it up if you didn't know. Its very interesting to me that most people do not do this.
I guess this might be my reason for excelling in vocab and failing in grammar. I can tell you a thrilling story with amazing syntax and vocab, that is full of run-on sentences and fragments, with comma's strewn about as if they were sprinkles on my cupcake story.
Cormac McCarthy!!
On June 06 2013 10:07 hp.Shell wrote:Okay, at first I thought this was Haruki Murakami's blog. I was awestruck. But now it seems more realistic. Good on you for looking up those words!
Not the first time I've been told this, as you might imagine. Apparently my Japanese writing resembles his style too.
On June 06 2013 13:24 kefkalives wrote:
Haji, Have you read Heart of Darkness? If not, Conrad was a pole, who spoke english as his 3rd(?) language. Some of the most complex english vocabulary in a novel i have ever read.
read it in school. Classmates hated it, I actually enjoyed it. I don't remember much about it since I read it over 10 years ago, but it's on my bookshelf so maybe I'll read it again
On June 06 2013 22:33 Silencioseu wrote:
Excuse me but what do you mean by "day week"?
I believe it is "one week in the future, the same day"
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Tried to read Moby Dick once, did not make it past chapter one. Everything I had to look up seemed utterly useless in any imaginable scenario where I would have to use the english language, except reading Moby Dick itself.
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If you haven't read Country of the Blind or the original Curious Case of Benjamin Button I would recommend checking those out as well. Country of the Blind got me into short stories and really sent me on a hunt for older sci-fi novels. Also, if you ever want to expand your vocabulary and sound even more pretentious just start reading philosophy.
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On June 05 2013 13:03 MountainDewJunkie wrote:
Slake = lake filled with snakes.
Buskin = the pokemon that evolves into Combuskin.
Gibbous = a hat that only f2p's wear
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Not to toot my own horn but there wasn't a word on that list I didn't already know. Thats probably down to the fact that I am both a heavy reader of books and studied a lot of old plays at stage school, a lot of those words aren't in common usage these days.
There are some words on there that I am surprised u didn't know, so much so that I must assume you are not a native speaker or that your school needs a good kick up the backside! Read more books, its a fantastic way to learn new words that you can use to insult morons without them knowing it!
you can find the word rhododendron in two Harry Potter books, don't ask me how I remember that lol
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You seriously didn't know what "wooden" meant ?
Or did you just include that to see if anyone would actually read the whole list :p
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damn pretty suprising how many words that weren't part of your vernacular
lol@ candlestick
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 10 2013 08:05 Geiko wrote:
You seriously didn't know what "wooden" meant ?
Or did you just include that to see if anyone would actually read the whole list :p
3. without spirit, animation, or awareness.
nope! not in this context!
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On June 10 2013 07:54 emythrel wrote:
you can find the word rhododendron in two Harry Potter books, don't ask me how I remember that lol
Yeah it's plant (common enough around here), which you can tell because of "dendron" --> treelike structure. I dunno what rhodo is though.
Everybody's obvious words and strange words are different! Only solution is to read more. :D
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I think it might not be so much knowing a word as not having seen it used in that way. I imagine that the context clues would usually refer you to readily inferred categorical definitions for almost all the words in that list.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 10 2013 16:11 Aerisky wrote:
I think it might not be so much knowing a word as not having seen it used in that way. I imagine that the context clues would usually refer you to readily inferred categorical definitions for almost all the words in that list.
yup that's a much better way to put it
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Side conversation: ya, being called a gaijin for the past 2 years was pretty cute at first, but to be honest it did just start to get to me a little, at least when i thought about it. I still feel more rude calling some one a jap compared to a gaijin though.
About the list, i am way impressed you were not only willing to look all these up, but then to re-write them all up here for us, just to make me realize how little vocab i have. I have been hating myself recently becuase i have been noticing how poor my english vocabulary is, and this was the nail in the coffin.
Gotta start studying/reading more... (and then my japanese will take a nose dive)
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On June 10 2013 14:02 thedeadhaji wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2013 08:05 Geiko wrote:
You seriously didn't know what "wooden" meant ?
Or did you just include that to see if anyone would actually read the whole list :p 3. without spirit, animation, or awareness. nope! not in this context!
Something to think about when trying to decipher words is to break them into parts of them that I do know. Which can be difficult when starting out but once you figure out most of the prefixes and suffixes you can figure out a lot without a dictionary.
"Wooden", I would break into two parts, "Wood" and "-en" assuming we know what wood is, we are already a good portion of the way there. Now how do you get from 'wood' to 'without spirit or animation'? The suffix "-en" means "made of" Which would easily lead us to the first definition of wood. The rest of the definitions are why English is such a maddening language. Definitions 2,3, and 4 all take the first definition and apply it to something NOT made of wood, ie "a wooden gait" means someone walks with a very stiff step or a person with a "wooden face" would be without animation or not moving very much. It is easy to understand these things by saying "he walks like he was made of wood", or "his face looks like it is made of wood", or "he acts like he is made of wood" and then leave the understanding up to the reader to realize that wood does not have any facial animation or would look silly trying to walk, or is very boring to talk to. But since writers love using less words, 'wooden' can say all of that at once. You're describing how something seems to be made of wood, which implies that it has no animation, or is stiff, or that person is dull, etc. without having to say all of that.
Apologies if you already knew all of this and I sound like an idiot. I have no idea how obvious this sort of stuff is to non-native speakers. Being a native speaker makes it pretty hard to tell how much random context/structure I pick up on without even thinking about it.
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On June 06 2013 13:24 kefkalives wrote:
Haji, Have you read Heart of Darkness? If not, Conrad was a pole, who spoke english as his 3rd(?) language. Some of the most complex english vocabulary in a novel i have ever read.
Vladimir Nabakov also writes beautiful English prose despite it not being his first language.
I remember having the most new words to learn with Stephen Donaldson's the Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, and gave up almost immediately on Canterbury Tales. It really does sap the enjoyment from reading if a certain rhythm and pace can't be maintained, the grasp of the book can never take hold before being disengaged by the dictionary.
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EPT
