What happens when you come across a word you don\u2019t know? Do you just keep reading? Most people do. They believe they can figure out a word\u2019s meaning by looking at the sentence and using common sense. Maybe they\u2019re right \u2026 but what if they\u2019re wrong?<\/p>\n
Here is a passage from a profile of a historical figure: \u201cThe prince, once a redoubtable opponent, became enervated by constant warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Choose which of the following sentences is true of the prince:<\/p>\n
\u2022 The prince was a mighty warrior at first, but constant warfare exhausted him.
\n\u2022 The prince was not much of a soldier at first, but constant warfare made him a mighty warrior.<\/p>\n
Those who cannot be bothered to look up redoubtable\u00a0<\/em>and enervated<\/em> risk going through the entire essay with a distorted impression of the prince. Such readers are just wasting time\u2014theirs and the author\u2019s.<\/p>\n Serious readers look up every word they don\u2019t know, even words they\u2019ve seen before but are a bit fuzzy about. It is astonishing how few people demand this of themselves. Looking up a word never enters their minds, even though doing so takes mere seconds nowadays.<\/p>\n According to the language scholar Charles Harrington Elster, the average educated adult American has a vocabulary of between twenty-five thousand and forty thousand words. The Oxford English Dictionary <\/em>contains more than six hundred thousand words\u2014more words than exist in French and German combined.<\/p>\n So even if you had three times the vocabulary of the average person, you still would only know one out of every six English words that have ever appeared in print.<\/p>\n Last week\u2019s article included a sentence that prompted a surprising reaction. We wrote: \u201cThen there are those Wall Street peculators<\/strong> whose malfeasance still has the country reeling.\u201d Some readers assumed we meant \u201cspeculators.\u201d Their emails ranged from civil to scornful. One correspondent simply sent us the offending sentence, with \u201cpeculators\u201d blown up to three times the size of the other words. This is the verbal equivalent of rubbing a naughty puppy\u2019s nose in the mess he\u2019s made.<\/p>\n It is beyond us why anyone would write a \u201cgotcha\u201d email before doing basic research. If you type peculate\u00a0<\/em>into a search engine you\u2019ll get the definition in a few seconds. It probably took longer for the puppy-shamer to enlarge \u201cpeculators\u201d than it would have taken him to look it up.<\/p>\n Speculating is legal; peculating is a crime. \u201cSpeculators\u201d was too mild for our purposes. To us, \u201cpeculators\u201d was le<\/em> mot juste<\/em>.<\/p>\n So exercise due diligence before you hit \u201csend,\u201d or the mistake you expose may be your own.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pop Quiz<\/strong><\/p>\n Choose the best word. Answers are below.<\/p>\n 1. Taking advantage of that nice woman is ___.<\/p>\n A. contemptible 2. The ___ business of life is to enjoy it.<\/p>\n A. principle 3. I am ___ to participate in this activity.<\/p>\n A. reluctant 4. Boris felt no remorse, no ___ about what he had done.<\/p>\n A. compulsion 5. Billie suffers from the ___ that she can sing.<\/p>\n A. allusion <\/p>\n Pop Quiz Answers<\/strong><\/p>\n 1. A: Taking advantage of that nice woman is contemptible<\/em>. What happens when you come across a word you don\u2019t know? Do you just keep reading? Most people do. They believe they can figure out a word\u2019s meaning by looking at the sentence and using common sense. Maybe they\u2019re right \u2026 but what if they\u2019re wrong? Here is a passage from a profile of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,39,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-proofreading","category-vocabulary"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nB. contemptuous
\nC. A and B are both correct<\/p>\n
\nB. principal<\/p>\n
\nB. reticent
\nC. A and B are both correct<\/p>\n
\nB. compunction<\/p>\n
\nB. illusion
\nC. delusion<\/p>\n
\n2. B: The principal<\/em> business of life is to enjoy it.
\n3. A: I am reluctant<\/em> to participate in this activity.
\n4. B: Boris felt no remorse, no compunction<\/em> about what he had done.
\n5. C: Billie suffers from the delusion<\/em> that she can sing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"