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The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein onlineXXVII GROWING A VOCABULARYpage 2 of 4 | page 1 | table of contents  I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne. That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether I have profited or not, that is the way. It was the way Keats learned, and there never was a finer temperament for literature than Keats'. It is the great point of these imitations that there still shines beyond the student's reach, his inimitable model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of failure; and it is an old and very true saying that failure is the only highroad to success. _Form the Reference-Book Habit_ Do not be content with your general knowledge of a word--press your study until you have mastered its individual shades of meaning and usage. Mere fluency is sure to become despicable, but accuracy never. The dictionary contains the crystallized usage of intellectual giants. No one who would write effectively dare despise its definitions and discriminations. Think, for example, of the different meanings of _mantle_, or _model_, or _quantity_. Any late edition of an unabridged dictionary is good, and is worth making sacrifices to own. Books of synonyms and antonyms--used cautiously, for there are few _perfect_ synonyms in any language--will be found of great help. Consider the shades of meanings among such word-groups as _thief, peculator, defaulter, embezzler, burglar, yeggman, robber, bandit, marauder, pirate_, and many more; or the distinctions among _Hebrew, Jew, Israelite, and Semite_. Remember that no book of synonyms is trustworthy unless used with a dictionary. "A Thesaurus of the English Language," by Dr. Francis A. March, is expensive, but full and authoritative. Of smaller books of synonyms and antonyms there are plenty.[33] Study the connectives of English speech. Fernald's book on this title is a mine of gems. Unsuspected pitfalls lie in the loose use of _and, or, for, while_, and a score of tricky little connectives. Word derivations are rich in suggestiveness. Our English owes so much to foreign tongues and has changed so much with the centuries that whole addresses may grow out of a single root-idea hidden away in an ancient word-origin. Translation, also, is excellent exercise in word-mastery and consorts well with the study of derivations. Phrase books that show the origins of familiar expressions will surprise most of us by showing how carelessly everyday speech is used. Brewer's "A Dictionary of Phrase, and Fable," Edwards' "Words, Facts, and Phrases," and Thornton's "An American Glossary," are all good--the last, an expensive work in three volumes. A prefix or a suffix may essentially change the force of the stem, as in _master-ful_ and _master-ly_, _contempt-ible_ and _contempt-uous, envi-ous_ and _envi-able_. Thus to study words in groups, according to their stems, prefixes, and suffixes is to gain a mastery over their shades of meaning, and introduce us to other related words. _Do not Favor one Set or Kind of Words more than Another_ "Sixty years and more ago, Lord Brougham, addressing the students of the University of Glasgow, laid down the rule that the native (Anglo-Saxon) part of our vocabulary was to be favored at the expense of that other part which has come from the Latin and Greek. The rule was an impossible one, and Lord Brougham himself never tried seriously to observe it; nor, in truth, has any great writer made the attempt. Not only is our language highly composite, but the component words have, in De Quincey's phrase, 'happily coalesced.' It is easy to jest at words in _-osity_ and _-ation_, as 'dictionary' words, and the like. But even Lord Brougham would have found it difficult to dispense with _pomposity_ and _imagination_."[34] |