The Vocabulary Builder Workbook: Simple Lessons and Activities to Teach Yourself Over 1,400 Must-Know Words

Copyright © 2018 by Chris Lele

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ISBN: Print 978-1-93975-481-3 | eBook 978-1-93975-482-0

To my Dad, for showing me the power of words.

CONTENTS (n.) kənˈtents

Introduction

How to Use This Book

For Parents and Teachers

Pronunciation Guide

200 LESSONS

1 Prefix: Pre- (Part 1)

2 Prefix: Pre- (Part 2)

3 Eponymous Parts of Speech from Antiquity (Part 1)

4 Eponymous Parts of Speech from Antiquity (Part 2)

5 Words from French (Part 1)

6 Words from French (Part 2)

7 Words from French (Part 3)

8 Compound Words and Phrases from French

9 Words from German

10 Words with an Italian Origin (Part 1)

11 Words with an Italian Origin (Part 2)

12 Words from India

13 Traveling Words

14 Misleading Words (Part 1)

15 Misleading Words (Part 2)

16 Quiet to Noisy

17 Only Fools Rush In

18 Speaking Words

19 Just How Much? (Part 1)

20 Just How Much? (Part 2)

21 In My Opinion

22 How Big Is Your Appetite?

23 A Question of Trust

24 Is That a Compliment? (Part 1)

25 Is That a Compliment? (Part 2)

26 From Lazy to Lively

27 Hard at Work?

28 Words About Words (Part 1)

29 Words About Words (Part 2)

30 Where Did You Go to School?

31 Mind Your Manners

32 Is It Clear?

33 Words Describing Character

34 Musical Words

35 Animal Words

36 Words Describing Animals

37 Religious Words (Part 1)

38 Religious Words (Part 2)

39 Prefix Ex-

40 Commonly Confused Pairs (Part 1)

41 Commonly Confused Pairs (Part 2)

42 Commonly Confused Pairs (Part 3)

43 Annoying Words

44 What Did You Call Me?

45 Courtroom Words

46 Give Peace a Chance

47 Frightening Words

48 Group Dynamics

49 Governmental Words

50 Words of Scale

51 How’s It Going?

52 Attention to Detail

53 The Facts of Life

54 It’s Debatable

55 It’s a Party!

56 Describing the Landscape

57 It’s About Time (Part 1)

58 It’s About Time (Part 2)

59 The Times They Are A-Changing

60 Secondary Meanings (Part 1)

61 Secondary Meanings (Part 2)

62 Secondary Meanings (Part 3)

63 Secondary Meanings (Part 4)

64 How Are You Feeling?

65 Time Periods

66 Flavor

67 Fun

68 False Friends (Part 1)

69 False Friends (Part 2)

70 Color Words

71 Colorful Words

72 Spending Words

73 Let’s Party

74 Words from the Body

75 Words from Myth

76 Heavenly Words

77 Two-Faced Words

78 A Matter of Trust

79 How Much Do You Know?

80 Money, Money, Money

81 Political Words (Part 1)

82 Political Words (Part 2)

83 It’s a Rebellion!

84 Biblical Words

85 What’s the Big Joke?

86 It’s No Laughing Matter

87 Recognition

88 Make Up Your Mind

89 Something Wicked This Way Comes

90 Are You the Boss or the Bossed?

91 Commonly Confused Words

92 Words from Yiddish

93 Words from Other Languages

94 Order and Leveling

95 Words from Science

96 Is It Everywhere or Anywhere?

97 Thou Doth Complain Too Much

98 Nothing Is Going to Stop Us Now . . . or Is It?

99 Spoils of War

100 Are You Likeable?

101 Hurtful Words

102 How Pure?

103 How Do I Express Myself?

104 Getting Better or Getting Worse?

105 It’s All About the Self

106 Three-Letter Words

107 Four-Letter Words

108 Very Long Words

109 Can You Feel It?

110 What’s All the Fuss?

111 What’s the Bright Idea? (Part 1)

112 What’s the Bright Idea? (Part 2)

113 Get Off the Couch!

114 Is This Confusing?

115 Anyone’s Guess

116 Harmful or Harmless?

117 The Anger Meter

118 From Cowardly to Courageous

119 I Have an Official Announcement to Make

120 Hold On to Your Wits! From Dull to Sharp

121 Prefix: Ben-

122 Prefix: Mal-

123 Prefix: Phon-

124 Prefix: Eu-

125 Prefix: Anthro-

126 Prefix: Circum-

127 Suffix: -Cracy

128 Prefix: Di-

129 Prefix: Dia-

130 Prefix: Epi-

131 Prefix: Ex- (Part 1)

132 Prefix: Ex- (Part 2)

133 Prefix: Ex- (Part 3)

134 Prefix: Im- (Part 1)

135 Prefix: Im- (Part 2)

136 Prefix: In- (Part 1)

137 Prefix: In- (Part 2)

138 Prefix: In- (Part 3)

139 Prefix: In- (Part 4)

140 Prefix: In- (Part 5)

141 Prefix: Inter- (Part 1)

142 Prefix: Inter- (Part 2)

143 Prefix: Sub-

144 Root: -Pathy

145 Root: Fract- , Frag-

146 Prefix: Bell-

147 Prefix: Carn-

148 Prefix: Cogn-

149 Root: Min-

150 Prefix: Apo-

151 Root: -Mit

152 Prefix: Pan-

153 Prefix: Para-

154 Prefix: Peri-

155 Root: -Scribe, -Script

156 Prefix: Trans-

157 Prefix: Pro-

158 Root: Punct-

159 Root: Put-

160 Root: Quisit-

161 Root: Rog-

162 Root: Sequ-

163 Root: Ec-

164 Prefix: A- (Part 1)

165 Prefix: A - (Part 2)

166 Root: Cit-

167 Prefix: Con - (Part 1)

168 Prefix: Con- (Part 2)

169 Prefix: De -

170 Prefix: En- (Part 1)

171 Prefix En- (Part 2)

172 Root: E -

173 Root: Fact-

174 Root: Fic-

175 Root: Gen-

176 Suffix: - Gress

177 Root: - Graph

178 Root: Ig-

179 Root: Pend-

180 Root: Reg-

181 Words Beginning with A

182 Words Beginning with B

183 Words Beginning with C

184 Words Beginning with D

185 Words Beginning with E

186 Words Beginning with F

187 Words Beginning with G

188 Words Beginning with H

189 Words Beginning with I

190 Words Beginning with L

191 Words Beginning with M

192 Words Beginning with N

193 Words Beginning with O

194 Words Beginning with P

195 Words Beginning with Q

196 Words Beginning with R

197 Words Beginning with S

198 Words Beginning with T

199 Words Beginning with U

200 Words Beginning with V

Further Resources

Answer Key

INTRODUCTION

People tend to assume I’ve always excelled at words. I’m a decent Scrabble player, include SAT words in conversation without realizing it, and do anagrams in my head for fun. Now that I’m a vocabulary expert at Magoosh, my innate verbal ability seems like a foregone conclusion.

But it wasn’t always this way. When I was in middle school, I remember having to study for vocabulary quizzes and dreading the experience. To make matters worse, my father would get excited every time he saw me with the vocabulary book open. Ask me any word, he’d exclaim. No matter how many syllables the word contained, he’d toss off definitions with aplomb, pressing me for another, the way a small child might ask for candy. I assumed he’d always known such words, and that this knowledge came easily to him. Meanwhile, I would be condemned to uttering no more than three-syllable words—and to poor grades on vocabulary quizzes.

I redoubled my efforts at studying, and while my quiz scores did inch up slightly, I felt that my father existed on some vocabulary plane that I’d never attain. What I didn’t realize then was that my father’s level of knowledge was very much within my grasp, but not from trying to memorize lists of words in a vocabulary book. For that’s all our school gave us: books containing lists of words, with no exercises or examples providing context, just dry definitions to be parroted back for a passing grade.

As I grew older, I became an avid reader. First I tried to figure out words in context and then always (and I mean always) consulted the dictionary. Now the previously dry, boring definition contained a special resonance: It unlocked the meaning of a word I had encountered in the wild. And learning words begot more words. Soon, I was actively seeking to grow my vocabulary, picking up books that would offer vivid example sentences, colorful descriptions of a word’s history, and synonyms galore. While providing riveting reading material (at least for a word lover), these books typically did not contain exercises to reinforce what I learned. It was only through sheer time and effort that I was able to build a strong vocabulary.

What I hope to give to you, the reader, is a book that extends beyond mere examples of words in sentences and word history—however colorful—and allows you to engage in activities that reinforce the words you’ve studied. Using this book, you will learn not merely to parrot a definition but to understand how a word functions in context. That way, you won’t only recognize words—you’ll be able to use them yourself. By the time you’ve completed the lessons and activities in this book, you’ll be a testament to what took me many years to realize: A large vocabulary is not built from memorizing word lists or from some innate verbal capacity that very few possess, but rather is formed through targeted practice and context recognition.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book is divided into 200 lessons, each featuring six to eight words that fit into the lesson’s category. To test your knowledge of many of the words just introduced, you’ll find a short activity at the end of each lesson asking you to use the new vocabulary in matching, unscrambling, and fill-in-the-blanks exercises.

Many lessons have been created by grouping words according to a theme that presents words along a spectrum. For instance, Lesson 17’s theme is Only Fools Rush In, which includes words that mean careful and thoughtful, in addition to words that mean careless and reckless. This means that the words featured in each lesson are typically not all synonyms, as that would limit the range of possible activities—as well as make for dull reading. Additionally, this spectrum allows us to explore the sometimes-subtle distinctions between words.

There is no single best way to use this book, as each of us has different needs. For instance, you might want to start by learning word roots if your vocabulary is not very strong. I find that learning roots is helpful for beginning students of vocabulary, because it allows them to group similar words around a small and thus easier to memorize segment of that word. At the other end of the spectrum, you might already have a strong vocabulary and wonder what in this book will be of value to you. To challenge even the word mavens among us, I have included some very difficult (though not too obscure) words. So as not to alienate beginner and intermediate learners, the words are arranged within each lesson according to difficulty.

Each lesson begins with three words, arranged in order from easiest to most difficult. For each I offer the part of speech, pronunciation, definition, an example of the word in a sentence, etymology (or word history), and finally an interesting tidbit to keep in mind. For the remaining four or five words in the lesson, I provide only the part of speech, pronunciation, and definition. These words are also arranged from simplest to most advanced. The last word of this group is usually a tough one. Indeed, sometimes the final two words are both pretty recondite (yes, that word is included in this book!). The words are followed by an activity to help you gauge your understanding.

So, if you’re a beginner, you might want to focus on just a few words per lesson and then try the activity at the end. Intermediate learners might want to attempt the entire lesson. Finally, those who already have a strong vocabulary can just skim the hardest words in each lesson.

That said, I do encourage everyone to try the activities, since their purpose is to reinforce what you’ve learned. Merely reading a definition and thinking I’ve got it isn’t the same as actually testing yourself.

Finally, don’t assume that by reading this book one lesson at a time, without ever going back to previous sections, you’ll retain very much. A vocabulary book, after all, is not a novel. Make a habit of revisiting previous lessons and redoing the activities (you might want to jot your answers on a separate piece of paper). After all, it is better to obtain a strong sense of a quarter of the words in this book than a tenuous grasp of half.

One last point: You should use this book in conjunction with reading. And I don’t mean just any reading. Seek out newspapers such as the New York Times or magazines such as the New Yorker or the Atlantic. As you read the articles in these publications, you’ll recognize many of the words featured in this book. When we encounter words in their natural habitat, not only do we get a deeper understanding of how they’re used, but that encounter will be unexpected, making it more likely that our brains will retain the information. Ultimately, that is the intention of this book: to make us better readers, better writers, and better thinkers.

FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS

Setting Expectations

The pace at which readers should progress through this book is determined to a large extent by the literacy level of the student. A good test of whether students should move on to another lesson is to ask them the definition of three words chosen at random from about 25 words (about three lessons). If they are able to tell you at least two definitions, then it is likely that they are ready to progress. Of course, watch out for parrots, those who recite a definition perfectly but can’t effectively use the word in a sentence. For this group, having them come up with an original sentence using the word is a good test of comprehension.

If a student is retaining at least 60 percent of the words they learn, three lessons per week is a good pace. However, you might want to slow down the pace to two lessons a week to make sure the student is learning vocabulary cumulatively and not just scoring B or A on the weekly quiz and then forgetting most of the words a few weeks later.

A few signs that a student should slow down:

• Merely parrots definitions

• Forgets most of the words from the previous week

• Is unable to provide definitions for two out of three words chosen at random from three lessons

• Seems to know the definitions but struggles with the fill-in-the-blank questions

A few signs that a student should speed up:

• Already knows many of the words in the lesson

• Provides definitions to three out of three words chosen at random from three lessons

Motivating Students

Some students may become bored, thinking that if they answer most of the activity questions correctly they are done learning. The key to improving one’s vocabulary is to commit words to long-term memory, so with these students, it is essential to continue testing them by choosing words at random. You might want to read fill-in-the-blank sentences out loud to see if they can come up with the word on their own.

For those students who easily become discouraged, it’s important to emphasize quality over quantity. Give them time to spend with just a few words and encourage them to use any of the additional resources mentioned in this book to provide them