Comments on: Unusual Words You Should Add to Your Vocabulary

By: Bill M. Tracer

Bill M. Tracer — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:41:31 +0000

A most impressive article. I'm in total agreement with you about spelling.

I may read things a little differently from the good folks at Cambridge. I stumbled over a few of those words, slightly pausing to think about what the word was supposed to be. But it was fairly easy to surmise a great deal merely from the context of each sentence. It is not just having the first and last letters in the right places, the contextual meaning of the written words constantly tells you what the next word is likely to be. So the combination of first letter/last letter clue along with the context of the written paragraph together give one enough information to surmise the words. From what is said here, it would suggest that perhaps the folks at Cambridge overlooked the possible significance of usage context within the given paragraph. That of course assumes they conducted their research, using only the paragraph you quoted as their research tool.

Which leaves me with the question, Do you know if this paragraph was the extent of their testing, or was their research more involved?

By: nutuba

nutuba — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:26:59 +0000

Wonderful article! Another new word I’ve heard a lot recently is a combination of gigantic and enormous — ginormous.

By: Gijo George

Gijo George — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:56:54 +0000

To express our ideas clearly we need to add more words to our vocabulary. Good article.

By: Anne Lyken Garner

Anne Lyken Garner — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:29:20 +0000

Thanks for your lovely comments, everyone. They’re much appreciated.

By: Mockingbird

Mockingbird — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:18:57 +0000

Anne…. perfect. I love your new words.

By: RJ Evans

RJ Evans — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:08:12 +0000

The new words are great and I will be using them immediately! Not only with my ollies but when I wally market (which has the joyous status of a word that can be both a noun and a verb!).

)

By: David irvine

David irvine — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:43:52 +0000

You have spent some time working on this. I thought it was great. Well done.

By: GordonG

GordonG — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:45:40 +0000

I will first say I really like some of the new words you have made up. More importantly I agree that it is important that people know how to spell because if they didn’t then no they could not read the miss spelled words on the university web site. I find that the suggestion that only needing to have the first and last letter correct is not only the most ubsurd thing I have ever heard it makes me wonder where they got thier degree in education to start with. Thanks again Anne for a great piece of work.

By: RJ Chamberlain

RJ Chamberlain — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 11:56:22 +0000

Yeh I’ve heard the one about spelling and that it doesn’t matter as long as the first and last letters are in the correct order. But you might be right in your opinion that its because we already know how to spell the word. One of those things you’ll never be able to prove though because if you couldn’t read in the first place then how would you know whether the letters were in the correct order or not anyway. My head is spinning now. Aswmeoe wrok hree Anne.

By: Anne Lyken-Garner

Anne Lyken-Garner — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 08:44:46 +0000

Tnahks for the ftasanic repsonse eyverone.

Anee.