Chapter 13 Get into the habit of consulting reference books

Don't be content with your general knowledge of a word -- continue your studies until you grasp the nuances of its meaning and usage from other words.Mere fluency is sure to be contemptible, but exactness of words is never contemptible.Dictionaries contain classic uses of words by intellectual masters.No one who can write effectively dares to underestimate its definition and its usage.For example, think of cloaks (English mantle has three meanings of cloak, covering and responsibility), models (English model has four meanings of model, model, model, model), quantity (English quantity has two different meanings of quantity and number) different meanings.Any new version of the full dictionary is nice and worth sacrificing a bit to have it.

Books on synonyms and antonyms can be of great help when used sparingly, as there are few absolute synonyms in any language.Remember that no synonym book can be trusted unless used in conjunction with a dictionary.The Dictionary of the English Language by Dr. Francis is expensive, but it is complete and authoritative.There are now a large number of related books on synonyms and antonyms. Learn about correlative words in English speech.Fernald's book on the subject is one of my most valuable collections.The unexpected difficulty lies in the imprecise use of some complex little conjunctions such as and, or, for, when, etc.

Word derivation contains a lot of hints.How much our English owes to other foreign languages, and has changed so much over the centuries, that a whole speech may have been derived from a separate, buried ancient source. The basic idea of ​​the word.Translation is also a great exercise for word mastery, and it's consistent with derivative learning. Phrasebooks that mark the origin of commonly used expressions amaze us, for they reveal how carelessly people use everyday conversation.Brewer's Dictionary of Phrases and Fables, Edward's Words, Facts and Phrases, Thornton's American Glossary are all good.Among them, Thornton's book is a precious three-volume work.

Prefixes and suffixes may radically change the power of the original stem, such as bossy (English is master-ful) and skillful (English is master-ly), mean (English is contempt—ible) and contemptuous (English is contemptible). English is contemp-uous), jealous (English is envi-ous) and enviable (English is envi-able).Therefore, learning words in word groups, according to their stems, prefixes and suffixes, allows us to grasp the nuances between them and allows us to understand other related words.