G'day, how are ya doing mate? Today, I am going to talk about a very useful online dictionary for learning vocabulary and word-root. I've always underscored the importance of learning English vocabularies from word-root including prefixes and suffixes. Once you've got accustomed to them, you can easily increase your word-bank. It'll be double or more, I reckon. So, what I want to introduce you is "Online etymology dictionary" : https://www.etymonline.com/ Let's explain some functions!
This is written in English only, but it's fairly easy to read because most of the descriptions are written in plain English sentences
If you are already intermediate or upper-intermediate English learners, then you're not going to have any problems. For instance, this page shows some information about the history of online etymology dictionary:
What do you reckon? Do you have any word that you don't know? I don't think you have. If I were you, I would possibly say like oh I'm just not quite sure about what "wheel-ruts" means. To be honest, I'm also not 100% certain. But I don't have any difficulty in understanding the overall meaning of these sentences. Sometimes, it is important for us to read between the line to get a big picture of what an article is about.
You can randomly learn new word-root by selecting alphabetically
You can learn all word-roots from A, or Z or even at random. This dictionary is like reading trainings in a daily basis. It's not too hard to finish them all within a week or two. I'd suggest learning everything here. I can assure you that you will boost your English vocabularies so much quicker than ever before. So, let's browse each alphabetically first, and then you decide which one you want to go through today.
You can literally use this online dictionary as a means of boosting your reading skills or enjoying some unique stories. Or let's hair down and fancy going out for dinner!! Once again, this is a dictionary, so English here is normally written in a simple manner. I don't think you are going to struggle to understand any article unless you are already at least intermediate English learners. For example, here is a piece of an interesting article:
When you are reading this article, you can see some words that are red coloured, and these words are associated with some kinds of etymological aspects.
Not only can you read as a normal reading stuff, but you can also learn new word-roots at the same time. Thus, if you don't have any book or journal at the moment, this dictionary is going to be a very useful source for reading training as well. Just one downside of this is that this website is not updating new articles every day. But, there are still heaps of old article archives, so that you won't be bored to tears.
Last but not least, since this is an etymology dictionary, there are heaps of information in respect of prefixes and suffixes, so you can learn so much thing here
When you use this dictionary, you're not just checking the word origin, but you're also learning much more things. For instance, if you look up one of the suffixes -ible, you can see the page like this:
It looks not much information, but it depends upon the word. But anyway, there is a piece of such a precise definition of how and where -ible comes from. And, there are couple of related words using -ible. So, once you remember this suffix, you'll be able to predict the meaning of new words using -ible next time. I'd suggest picking up some prefixes here. Like, re-, co-, com-, de-, im-, per-, sub-, or trans-. You click one of the words, and then you can learn new prefixes accordingly. In doing so, I'm sure you'll be able to master all basic etymology in a month or two. And, then you don't really need to consult your English dictionary very often. Maybe just checking phonetic symbols for refining your pronunciation or how it is sounded out.
That's all for today. Thanks for reading!
Have a good one!