How do you deal with unfamiliar words?

[Mrunal Tikekar]

I mark or write down all the unfamiliar words I encounter in a book. First I try figuring out the meaning from the context, then refer a dictionary to check how wrong/correct I was. And then I like to construct different sentences using those words and weave them into my conversations until I am sure they are a permanent part of my vocabulary.

[Aditi Sapate]

When I initially started reading, I used to be intimidated because of the number of unknown words. Sometimes I used to look them up, sometimes I used to be lazy and let them go. But sometimes I find myself using certain words, and when someone asks me what it means, I can't really put the meaning into words. But when I look the word up later, I realize that it makes sense and fits the situation. Really, such is the power of words and the power or reading!

[Reynaa]

I look them up in a dictionary or use context clues as to what the author means. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, I actually love looking up definitions of unfamiliar words. They are usually items that are obsolete now but were used in that era. I love learning about these types of objects so it adds more fun to the books for me.

[Inkroverts]

When I was younger, I'd look up the dictionary and jot down the words in my vocabulary bank. But these days I just sort of guess the meaning of the words using the general context of the paragraph. It's more efficient this way. And sometimes I even remember how the use these words.

[Nym182]

First of all I commend anyone who actually puts in the effort to learn new words so that's awesome!

I follow very similar steps as you do actually! I first try to figure out generally what the word means via context clues. But if I am totally in the dark, I go to a trusty dictionary online and look up the definition and synonyms.

One thing I need to work on is how to pronounce certain words I have learned primarily through reading.

For Ex: I know what a trebuchet is (it's like a type of catapult) but in my head I always thought of it as tre-bu-chet. My husband and I were talking the other day and he started talking about "tre-boo-ch-a"s and I was like whhhaaaat... then in kinda hit me I've been thinking that word wrong the entire time haha

I've actually heard that that is a common thing for people who have primarily gained their vocabulary via reading!

[Ria710]

If I can't take a guess at what the word could probably mean, then I look it up online. I love learning new words while reading.

[Daniel Muky]

When reading anything other than fiction i always look up the word...am not a native speaker and I lack severely...but for fiction I always skip it if I can still get the meaning without it..

[Henrytbab]

Since reading a couple of Philip Roth's books, I've been questioning the extent and accuracy of my own vocabulary. I found that reading him, aged the pages of my dictionary by a few years. I wonder how people, while reading, deal with words that are not familiar. As for myself, I use several techniques: If the story captivates me – if there is a lot of suspense, I tend to skip over unfamiliar words as long as I can keep the meaning of the story intact. Sometimes, I can glean the meaning of the word by its association within the subject matter and its use within the sentence. In fact, that is how I built most of my vocabulary. For example, I was watching a TED Talk that hosted Mr. Forbes who was talking about how people form coalitions with members who may not like each other. He used the word, antipathy a number of times. His use of the word made it quite clear that antipathy meant a dislike for another person. So, without having to look the word up, I learned a new word simply by experiencing its use. But my understanding of this word is very shallow. Looking the word up, I discovered that antipathy is a deep seeded, instinctive dislike toward anything – like, some people have an antipathy toward snakes, or spiders. Some people have an antipathy toward people with a different skin color, or a different culture, or religion. Instead of bigotry, and prejudice, I now can color this subject slightly different by using the word antipathy. The word prejudice is simply a preference of one thing over another, but antipathy … in that word is an element of fear and hate. This is a new perspective. Forget prejudice, how do we deal with antipathy? Such is the power of words, and a more robust vocabulary. To my shame, my vocabulary is rudimentary – I'm terrible with crossword puzzles, and most of my words were learned through experiencing their use – nothing scholastic. How often are you confronted with unfamiliar words while reading? How do you deal with them?

Not very often but when I do come across them, I use the dictionary. Now that you've mentioned Philip Roth's books, I will check them out.

[Arite Seki]

I usually read on and try to put the word in context of the sentence in order to try understand the meaning. Most of the time though, if I find a word challenging I open up my dictionary and thesaurus to find the meaning and other similar words, that usually helps the words to stick in my brain.

[Yearly Joy Besoy]

When I come accross an unfamiliar word, I look it up in the dictionary if it doesn't disturb my rhythm of reading. However, if the unfamiliar word can be easily understood by analysing how it is used in the sentence, it saves me time by not consulting the dictionary. If that unfamilliar word disturbs my rhythm, I'll just note that word down and look it up when I finish a chapter.

[readsbyarun]

I would use my dictionary to check the meanings of unfamiliar words. But reading using e-readers helps me a lot in understanding the meaning of some unknown words.

[Bigwig1973]

Indulging in a literary experience without comprehension is a slanderous, incorrigible act resulting in the insulting defilement of aesthetic value or, Nah - man, I just don't feel like messing with that right now!
When I started reading in my youth, I used to look up words. Then, I started reading books I found in my parents basement, mostly classics, and I totally gave up on looking words up because there were so many to look up and I thought it interrupted the flow of the story. Perhaps I thought of writers as writing for the sake of the story, to thrill or to frighten - to make the reader cry or upset, to help the reader relax and so, interrupting the experience by looking up a word (unless it seemed really essential) wasn't worth the cost of ruining the experience of reading the novel. Later, when one has to write papers on books, looking up meanings becomes more necessary. I would still try to read the story for the sake of the story (philosophically, the word "qua" roughly means "for the sake or purpose of") and then I would also read again in a more technical fashion. Consequently, to this day, I probably have a more hazy understanding of certain words that I never got around to looking up. Being aware of this potential flaw of mine, I always made sure that I a dictionary or thesaurus around so I could check a words actual meaning before I handed in an essay. Now, I probably read three times. Once for the aesthetic value (in some technical books, that is almost impossible: like reading a Haynes repair manual for the beauty of word choice - like, OMG, he used "pully" instead of "belt" or "dual overhead cam" and not "twin cam"), another for a more thorough understanding, and the last for a perhaps most complete understanding. Even to this day, I think I know what "Thou shalt" means but I seriously doubt that I completely understand it.

[Essywa]

I note down the unfamiliar words and Google their meaning.

[sraby1]

The first thing I do when I encounter any unfamiliar word is try to figure it out via context clues. When that fails, I either locate the nearest dictionary or look the definition of the word up online.

[DennisK]

Indulging in a literary experience without comprehension is a slanderous, incorrigible act resulting in the insulting defilement of aesthetic value or, Nah - man, I just don't feel like messing with that right now!
When I started reading in my youth, I used to look up words. Then, I started reading books I found in my parents basement, mostly classics, and I totally gave up on looking words up because there were so many to look up and I thought it interrupted the flow of the story. Perhaps I thought of writers as writing for the sake of the story, to thrill or to frighten - to make the reader cry or upset, to help the reader relax and so, interrupting the experience by looking up a word (unless it seemed really essential) wasn't worth the cost of ruining the experience of reading the novel. Later, when one has to write papers on books, looking up meanings becomes more necessary. I would still try to read the story for the sake of the story (philosophically, the word "qua" roughly means "for the sake or purpose of") and then I would also read again in a more technical fashion. Consequently, to this day, I probably have a more hazy understanding of certain words that I never got around to looking up. Being aware of this potential flaw of mine, I always made sure that I a dictionary or thesaurus around so I could check a words actual meaning before I handed in an essay. Now, I probably read three times. Once for the aesthetic value (in some technical books, that is almost impossible: like reading a Haynes repair manual for the beauty of word choice - like, OMG, he used "pully" instead of "belt" or "dual overhead cam" and not "twin cam"), another for a more thorough understanding, and the last for a perhaps most complete understanding. Even to this day, I think I know what "Thou shalt" means but I seriously doubt that I completely understand it.

The ambiguity of language is a subject of discussion that can go on, forever. For me, there is one word that I particularly dislike. This word brings to mind a movie scene from Abbot & Costello's Lost in a Harem when the words, “Poko Moko” is spoken. If you are as old as I am, you will know to what I refer. My hated word is, existential – and all of its derivatives. … well, I don't exactly hate it, but in most cases, when I am subjected to it, I want to throw my hands up and walk away.