Have you ever completed the Word Power feature in Reader’s Digest? I’m not much interested in such games – I don’t even do crosswords! – but I am committed to increasing my own vocabulary. Why? Because if I know more words, I’ll be able to read more fluently. But even more important, I’ll be able to write better. Knowing lots of words allows me – and you — to be more precise in writing. In my word-of-the-week feature I share a word with you that I’ve discovered in my own reading.
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: caesura…. When I saw the word caesura, I knew it meant a gap or a pause and I assumed the term to …
Reading time: Less than one minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: fubsy…. I was reading the Delia Owens’ novel Where the Crawdads Sing when the word fubsy jumped off the page and gave …
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: fumarole…. I live on the Pacific West Coast, in an earthquake zone. Perhaps that’s why I’m familiar with seismological terms — and …
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: mellifluously… Every once in awhile in this column, I like to focus on a word I already know. Mellifluously falls into that …
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: scagliola… In Rachel Cusk’s plot-free novel Outline, she presents a word I had never before seen, scagliola. Upon using the dictionary, however, …
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: scion…. If you’d asked me if I understood the meaning of the term scion, I would have said yes. But I would …
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: teasel… I keep a Word document containing all the new and interesting words I encounter in my daily reading. When I collected …
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: hawser… As a longtime fan of the English writer Julian Barnes, I gave a little squeal of joy when my husband picked …
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: apogee…. I’ve seen the word apogee dozens of times in my reading. I knew, vaguely, that it meant the height or high …
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: mesallinace…. Craig Brown’s book, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, is enormous fun, even for people who aren’t fans of the royals. A kind …
