Increase Your Vocabulary!

This is the first of the weekly vocabulary lists that I hope most of you will profit from. Each week, I shall put up 20 words I think you need to know, or at least would be good for you to know. Please try each week to learn the ones you don't already know. Although it may seem obvious why increasing your vocabulary is important, it wouldn't hurt to spell it out a little more explicitly.

First of all, knowing more words would better ensure that you understand accurately the things you read. Beyond helping you do that bit better for your Comprehension Paper (in the short term), it would also make you a better-informed person more able to appreciate, analyse and critique (not necessarily criticise) what you read and hear. Having a wide vocabulary also means that you are equipped with more words from which to select the most suitable to express your views and feelings. And if writing well (let's say, for instance, in your essay paper) consists largely in--or is impossible apart from--the use of apt words, then it is of utmost urgency and importance that you continually pursue a larger vocabulary. A note of caution though: it is not simply the number of words for which you can give the dictionary definitions that is important. More significant is the question of whether these words become a part of your functioning, living vocabulary, do that you do not just become a mugger of dictionary definitions, a pedant!

Finally, I hope that you will enjoy learning (or revising your knowledge of) these words as much as I think I shall selecting and posting them up here for you.

Words for Term 3 Week 3 (helping you count down to the exams in Week ?)

1. imperative
2. perfunctory
3. categorical
4. exacerbate
5. conversely
6. contemporaneous
7. advocate
8. conduce
9. induce
10. decry (not descry)
11. suffrage
12. sovereignty
13. mandate
14. malinger
15. demagogue
16. modicum
17. superfluous
18. prerequisite
19. vociferous
20. rectify