Get Our Your Dictionary and Get Something Out of It

1914

THE STUDY OF WORDS.

It's a Helpful Scheme to Use Your Dictionary Every Day.

Writing an article, "Treasure In Books," in the Woman's Home Companion, Laura Spencer Porter gives the following excellent advice about the advantages to be gained from the study of words:

"The study of words — it may sound to you a dry thing, yet I promise you it is not; very far from it.

"And this brings me to suggest that the habit of one of the great writers of studying carefully from a good dictionary five words each day is one from which we might all of us get a good deal of profit. Or take a good book of synonyms, for instance, and learn from it each day five words somewhat similar, comparing and weighing carefully the meanings and values of them.

"Notice the degrees of force in the following: To dislike, to hate, to loathe, to detest, to abhor. Each note struck is a little stronger, higher. We might say, like an ascending crescendo scale. So to instruct, to teach, to educate, are each quite different in meaning, with a great nicety of difference. So, rebuke, reprimand, censure, blame, are all of one color, but of how different shades of meaning. So, too, misfortune, calamity, disaster; so, weak, feeble, decrepit, and what delicate difference between fame and renown or feminine and womanly and womanish."