G'day mate. How's tricks? Today, I am going to talk about how you can increase your English vocabularies. Definitely there are so many ways you can think of, but the best of the best is to learn "etymology", which consists of three pillars: Prefix, Suffix and Word roots.
1 (Prefix)
You could be able to recognise the meaning of the words once you've mastered all the essential prefixes. For instance, anti-, dis-, un- and in-/im- implies the meaning of opposite, against, negation, absence, removal or separation, etc.
Antipathy - what's the meaning of this word? You might be able to guess by thinking about anti- + pathy (= denoting feelings). So, it's against your normal feeling, which is deep-seated feeling of hatred or aversion.
Dismantle - what's the meaning? Well, it's very simple. Dis- + mantle means that your car covered/mantled snow. But you wanted to dismantle it, which means that you want to remove it. For instance, North Korea has not determined to dismantle their nuclear program.
2 (Suffix)
Suffix, being added at the end of the word, is very useful for recognising which part of speech the words are, such as -ness, -fy, -ly. Good for boosting your writing skills as well!!
-ness: This suffix gives you a hint. This means noun. For example, kindness, tenderness, fondness, etc.
-fy: This one means that you can make a verb. For instance, justify, intensify, satisfy.
-ly: This one is making an adverb, such as likely, surprisingly, interestingly.
3 (Word roots)
Word roots, being added at the beginning or the end of a word, are quite useful for the origin of the word. For instance, -end-. Weekend, backend, endless, endmost.
Let's take the word 'endmost', which you can guess it means it's nearly the endpoint, or the closest to the end.
In conclusion, the best of the best way is to make sure you thoroughly learn etymology from scratch. There are so many free materials out there. You don't really need to consult with an English dictionary all the time. Maybe it's good for checking phonetic symbols when you are not sure how it sounds.
Should you need any further information or have queries, don't hesitate to contact me via email or leaving your comments below.
Thanks for reading today!
Have a great day!