Vocab Smith Official Blog

Language guides you through the labyrinth of communication. It is well known that the more your facility with language, the more the chances that you would not need to grope through this labyrinth. Negotiation comes easier to you. Putting your point across becomes a breeze. Is it a wonder that companies are spending huge amounts of money that their employees right down the company hierarchy have keener language acuity?

But did you know that recent evidence shows that continuously challenging ourselves to gain more facility with language inhibits brain atrophy? Yes, not only that, research suggests that our linguistic abilities even help to prevent Alzheimer’s.

Gamon and Bragdon, both pundits in cognitive sciences, in their book ‘Building Mental Muscle’ write:

A growing body of evidence also supports the idea that a willingness to challenge yourself linguistically helps to maintain your brain cells. In the so-called ‘nun study’ it was found that those nuns who used a relatively complex writing style as young novitiates were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s later in life than those nuns who wrote in a style marked by simpler, shorter sentences. So a life-long willingness to challenge yourself to grapple with complex linguistic structures may have a preventive effect against Alzheimer’s.

Our short term working memory erodes as we age. It becomes difficult to analyze complex sentences such as Inspite having trained their guns at the pilots’ head, the Captain nevertheless refused to afford the terrorists an opportunity to hijack the plane. ‘Garden path’ sentences become harder to comprehend. A ‘Garden path’ sentence is one that leads you down a garden path in your linear word-by-word parsing. As you reach the end of the sentence you sense that what you have assimilated is utter rubbish and you need to go over it again to obtain better results. For example: The snake slithered under the bench hissed.

Our working memory works on the principle of ‘use it or lose it’ (Gamon and Bragdon, 2003). More and more teenagers are losing the ability to do mental maths because of calculators. A similar thing can happen for your language acuity. Continuously use your brain cells to enhance this acuity or else be prepared to lose it.

It is not alone for the managers and GRE/ GMAT aspirants to work on their word power enhancement (we call this process vocabletics). This is for everyone out there in streets and homes. Improve your word power; not only will you become a great communicator, you will ward off the march of the Alzheimer’s proactively.

Do you have a foreboding that one of your elderly relative is at the cusp of working memory loss? The following tests adapted from Gamon and Bragdon’s book on Build Mental Muscle may help you identify:

1. Explain to your relative that you are going to ask him to repeat a short phrase word for word. Then read the following out loud:

“If you couldn’t cook, I’d drop you quicker than a box of rocks”

One of the following will be the result:

A.  He can’t repeat it correctly.

B. He makes a mistake the first time, but gets it right the second time.

C. He does it perfectly the first time.

2. Mention a common category such as fruits, animals or vegetables, and ask your relative to list as many members of that category as he can in one minute.

One of the following will happen:

A. He can only think of 10 or fewer

B. He can only think of 11 to 15

C. He can think of 16 or more

Based on the results you will be able to deduce whether there are any alarm signals.

It may come as a shock that a lot of folks aren’t able to read the Time magazine. Why? Because they are hamstrung by their limited vocabulary.

Let’s take the case of Time magazine’s May 25, 2009 Asia Pacific edition. In this edition we came across the following thirty six words among others:

celibacy
genocide
alleviates
sybaritic
abstinence
pedophilia
encomiums
filibustered
indictment
alacrity
fester
vigilante
syncretic
subterfuge
détente
burgeoning
coalescing
xenophobia
audacity
sophistry
dissembling
avowals
frenetic
loathe
abattoirs
lacquer
purported
feisty
diabolical
immaculate
repository
bizarre
ghoulish
fondant
ensemble
virtuoso
cadenza

I am sure you are familiar with some of the words given here. While, with a few others you may well guess the meanings from its usage and context. Still, you may well draw a blank with the remaining few.   Remember that this is an Asia Pacific avatar of the magazine published in the US. Research has shown that most people will have difficulty with close to 120 words in the US edition of this magazine. That is why, people inconvenienced by ordinary vocabulary, may well gloss over the Time but may not actually read it.

So, how much are we missing out because our vocabulary happens to be high school level? A large chunk of our world, I would say. If a popular magazine has a few words that you don’t understand, think what you are missing out. Add up the articulation that goes into pedagogical works and treatises. Yes, there is a whole lot that is out of your reach.
‘So how do I improve my vocabulary’, you may ask. Vocabulary building is serious stuff. You have to do it methodically, systematically and with a clear goal and time-line.

Vocabletics, the website that facilitates adaptive learning, will help you with the method and system. The timeline and goal are clearly in your own private domain.

Have you ever wondered about the longest word in the English language? I grew curious after I heard the word lymphosarcoma. Actually, Amitabh Bachhan of Bollywood famously diagnosed Rajesh Khanna with ‘lymphosarcoma of the intestine’ in a touching Bollywood movie called ‘Anand’. That’s how I came to know about lymphosarcoma.

It turns out that the longest word in the English language depends upon what words form part of your investigation. Are you including only such words that are derived naturally from the language’s roots? Are you allowing words that have been formed by coinage and construction? Are you considering place names and technical terms? Now, technical terms can be as long as you want. Also, the units of measurement can even differ. Length can be measured by the number of written letters in a word or the number of phonemes in that word.Here is a table giving out longest words with various criteria of measure:

Longest words in English

Let’s take the longest nontechnical coined word, floccinaucinihilipilification. (I chose this criterion because technical words can be as long as you wish, for eg, zzzzzzyyyyyyxxxxxyyyyyyyyuuuuttttttttppppppp, etc)Do you know what floccinaucinihilipilification means? I didn’t till I found out from wiki. It means ‘estimation of something as worthless’. Well, if a 29 letter word ‘estimates something as worthless’ then the appropriate synonym for such a word would be makeamountainoutaofamolehill.

I am sure you know the shortest word(s) in English. I … a … burrrrp, excuse me, needn’t burp it out.

You have the pundits’ permission
To use apostrophe in omission
In possessives you are free to use
In plurals you are free to choose

First, let us a few letters omit
Therefore a few words in size, limit
In silent letters ov’r is a substitute
In contractions it’s in multitudes

And if you have shampoo’d your hair
Do let the ‘e’ disappear
You are correct if you omit the numeral
That’s how I write Indira’s ’84 funeral

Let’s now take the possessive case
Of words that don’t end with an ‘s’
If George’s death brought in the coroner
Men’s room was just round the corner

In names too give not the ‘s’ a miss
Charles’ it isn’t, Charles’s it is
But classical names are exceptions
As Achilles’ heel and Jesus’ crucifixion

In some institution and in some place
-Take Barclays Bank and Toms river case-
We drop the mark of apostrophe here
That is because of usage there

Yet, Woolworth’s Store is another way
But not for long, that I can say
For goodness’ sake where is the ‘s’?
That, my friend, is anyone’s guess

His, hers, its, theirs and ours
All dropped the mark, as has yours
Possessive pronouns are a different lot
Compound nouns are another lot

Duke of Edinburgh’s gaffe was the worst this summer
What he did before Genco Olive Oil’s customer

And if you had a joint company
The last name will hold the possessive key
For if Vinnie and Sonny had some buttonmen
Would be Vinnie and Sonny’s buttonmen then

McDonald’s is already in possessive
Adding an ‘s’ would be surely regressive
So let’s do it with a prepositional phrase
Quarter pounders at McDonald’s is a nice little phrase

Writing 1980’s, CPA’s isn’t quite right
Let the end of 2000s be very bright
Finally, let’s drop the mark from p’s and q’s
And ask about ‘em in the MCQs

-Adapted from ‘Prescriptivist’s Corner: The Catastrophe of Apostrophe’ by Dave Wilton