Subject: I infer
Author:
Posted on: 2013-04-25 20:05:00 UTC
I infer the meanings of words, and have always done so. When I was little, I would ask my mom, and she would tell me to look it up. Naturally, I did no such thing, and ended up increasing my power of inference. It proved useful when taking the SATs.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently, because I've been re-reading a bunch of the Discworld books. While I was reading them, I noticed that there was about one word per book that I didn't actually know - it was easy enough to guess the meaning from the rest of the sentence, and previously that's what I would have done. Getting up, finding a dictionary, looking the word up, was too much of a disruption for me to bother with. But these days, with a smartphone in my pocket, I can look stuff up almost instantly.
The most recent unknown word that I came across is from Soul Music, and was used when referring to the Unseen University's organ: plangent.
Apparently it refers to a sound, and either means 'loud and reverberating' or 'plaintive; sad'.
Just wondering, if you come across a word you don't recognise, do you look it up, or just guess? And what words have you found recently that you didn't recognise?
My vocabulary has been helped by Shadowjack Watches Sailor Moon - it's sort of like an abridged series, but in text, and it's great. For episodes 44 and 125, he ended up writing in Shakespearean-style, and it's AWESOME.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?479656-IWIW-Sailor-Moon-Part-2!&p=11200147#post11200147
Well, there's 'pewling stirk' , which is really an insult, 'regolith' (a kind of rock). I had to look up the exact definitions but it's pretty easy to guess at general meaning.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?662888-IWIW-Sailor-Moon-Sailor-Math-8-Sailors-Mistress-9-Thread-11!&p=16149341#post16149341
Some archaic terms - corse and murtherer for corpse and murderer,'caitiff' (a coward), 'recusance' (refusing to obey authority), 'cozen'd' (to trick), and 'armillary' (hoops or rings, but an armillary sphere is used as a model for stars)
Though I do look them up later to be sure I've got the meanings right. To my chagrin, I usually mispronounce long or unusual words, because I almost never have the chance to use them in conversation and just read or write them.
I infer the meanings of words, and have always done so. When I was little, I would ask my mom, and she would tell me to look it up. Naturally, I did no such thing, and ended up increasing my power of inference. It proved useful when taking the SATs.
If I come across a word I don't know, I just hold my finger on it, and the dictionary it has loaded onto the device gives me a quick definition of the word. I use it with Discworld a lot too, actually. The good thing is that I know what Prattchet was truly trying to say. The bad thing is, I find I don't put it to memory well. After all, why memorize it when the definition is a second away? This summer, I have to sit down with a dictionary and just put to memory all those words I should know but don't. Wish me luck.
Tend to infer a word's meaning from its context. If I find a word particularly interesting or can't figure it out from the context, I will look it up.
Sadly, I haven't had much time for recreational reading of late, thanks to class.