Oct 01 2008
How Good is Your Vocabulary?
Sometimes, I need a gentle reminder to study vocabulary. After all, I am a writer. I don’t expect to know everything nor do I feel as if a good vocabulary is absolutely essential to being a well paid writer. However, I LIKE words. New words stimulate my creativity. This is something I don’t take advantage often enough.
My husband just asked me what messianic means. I didn’t know. I had an impression. It’s a word I’ve used before, which means that I probably knew what it meant back then. Or, I could have used it feeling reasonably content that my impression was close to being correct. Do you know what it means? (I’m not telling!)
So to look it up, I started with dictionary.com which was a little useless. Then I remembered that Merriam-Webster of Webster’s Dictionary fame has a pretty cool online site. Just go to www.merriam-webster.com. They have a word of the day, daily crosswords, and a ton of cool features. I plan to sign up for the word of the day and use it as a prompt for some creative writing. My first entry will feature the word “messianic”. 
Your “impression” point is right on, as is your advice to explore online resources. I’m still going to have a mini breakdown when I graduate and lose access to the king of dictionaries, the online OED, but now I’m motivated to check out Merriam-Webster and other possible replacements.
Also for a fun and charitable way to improve vocabulary check out freerice.com, which tests your word knowledge (and gets progressively harder or easier depending on how you perform) and donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program for every word you get right!