My spell checker is actually screaming at me right now over “thesaurusi” but it’s actually a correct alternate spelling for the pluralized form of thesaurus. According to several respected authorities, both thesauruses and thesaurusi are acceptable plural forms of thesaurus. Did you know that? I didn’t know that until I received my daily e-newsletter from The Visual Thesaurus site yesterday. Knowing that I can put an “I” on the end of thesaurus could come in real handy in a game of Scrabble and Scrabble is my favorite board game.
As a life-long learner, my philosophy has always been that any day that passes where I haven’t learned something new is a wasted day. One of the things that I like to do and endeavor to do every day is to add a few new words to my vocabulary. In my home handyman business I employ many quality hand tools, portable power tools and stationary power tools but as a writer my principle tools are words so knowing the right word to use in any given situation is as important to me as having the right power tool for the job at hand. Building ones vocabulary on a daily bases should be the goal of every wordsmith.
Hugh Macleod, an advertising executive and popular Blogger tells us that we need to “Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle.” When I first started out on my writing career some thirty-five years ago, I had a plethora of personal Mount Everest’s to climb and my limited vocabulary was just one of them. Harry Potter speaks “Parsal Mouth” but I spoke internal combustion engines, electronics and other like esoteric languages. In reality, I started working on my vocabulary right after my discharge from the United States Air Force some fourteen years earlier. I realized my need to build a more powerful vocabulary when I took a job selling the Encyclopedia Britannica door-to-door. My sales trainer actually started me on a life-long adventure when he gave a paperback book called 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. After finishing that short course in vocabulary building techniques, I wasn’t satisfied with learning one new word every day which was the goal that the author recommended so I set a minimum goal of five new words every day. That’s still my goal today.
When I first started courting my second wife by snail mail, she was and still is completely computer illiterate, her best friend accused me of writing her with a dictionary in one hand and a thesaurus in the other. I can see how my letters might have read that way because I made an effort to never use the same word twice. If I used the word “educated” in one sentence I would use the word “erudite” in another if I was still on the same subject. Her best friend told her that I must go to bed reading a dictionary or thesaurus every night and the truth is that she was very close to hitting the proverbial nail squarely on the head. To this very day one of my favorite ways to add new words to my vocabulary is to open a dictionary to any page chosen at random and run my finger down that page with my eyes closed. After stopping my finger when the time felt right I will open my eyes and look at the word right under my finger tip. I didn’t matter if it was a word that I knew well because I would then go to the thesaurus and learn its synonyms and antonyms. I made those words mine by finding a way to use each of them at least five times throughout the day. In the beginning I kept vocabulary lists in notebooks, today I keep my growing list in a computer file.
There are many other great ways to strengthen ones vocabulary. Read books that challenge your vocabulary and when you come across a word that you don’t know the meaning of look it up after trying to deduce the meaning from the way it’s used in the text. Then make that new word yours by using it several times during the day in conversation and writing.
There are many good vocabulary building sites on the World Wide Web that are free to use and publish vocabulary building e-newsletters with a daily word that you can subscribe to for free. Google “Vocabulary builders” but I recommend The Visual Thesaurus as a starting point. You can use the free version or subscribe to the premium service for less than $20 a tear.
