Quote:
Originally Posted by nathantw
Then how do you know what the word means? Do you just guess or assume what the definition is by the way it's used?
By the way, I'm like you and don't use a dictionary when reading, but that's mainly because one isn't always available. I think if I had one I'd use it.
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I honesty can't recall when I last came across an English word whose meaning I didn't know. I would consider myself pretty "well read", and hence have an extensive vocabulary. Most "fancy" English words derive from Latin or Greek, and since I am a classical scholar who reads Latin and Greek for recreation, my knowledge of these languages often tells me immediately what a word I haven't met before means. For example, I recently came across the word "adjuvant". I hadn't seem this word before, but I saw straight away that it was derived from the Latin verb "adjuvo", which means "I help", hence knew that "adjuvant" meant "a helper".