Seven Easy Ways to Improve Your Vocabulary Without Even Trying

Whether you want to improve your vocabulary for success on college entrance exams or to better position yourself in your career, you can find painless ways to learn and use new words without changing your current lifestyle or investing hours and hours toward study.

Read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal

Both of these newspapers are written for a higher education level than most newspapers. You'll still get the same news stories, but you'll be exposed to less common words and will get used to reading them and hearing them.

Play the Free Rice game online

This is a really fun site that donates 20 grains of rice for every word meaning you guess correctly. It's a great way to kill time. Not only do you learn something, you get to help others at the same time.

Look up words you don't know in a dictionary

There's no better way to learn new words than to look up the meaning in a dictionary. You can use a book style or an online dictionary. In Google, if you type "define:word" without the quotes, you'll get a list of meanings.

Read quality literature for leisure instead of best-sellers

If you've never read great literature, you don't know what you're missing. Make a visit to your neighborhood library and ask a reference librarian for help picking out classic literature. Check out E.M. Forster's "Howard's End" or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

Socialize with people who are smarter than you or who have advanced degrees

You don't need to completely abandon your neighborhood bar locals, but one of the easiest ways to increase your vocabulary is to hang out with people who have great vocabularies and have spent many years in college. Those people you know who have advanced degrees in the humanities especially will have no doubt written countless essays, research papers and theses which all require a powerful arsenal of words and the use of precise language. It's no doubt that their vocabulary in academia spills over into their everyday lives.

Learn a few Greek and Latin word parts (roots, prefixes and suffixes)

This is a quick and painless way to decipher the meaning or at least get close enough to the meaning of new words you come across. A large portion of the words we use are comprised of Greek and Latin parts. Pick up a book or search online for lists of roots, prefixes and suffixes. Learn a few basics and you'll be set for life.

Use a new word as soon as possible

Once you hear a new word, then look it up or figure out its meaning, in order to make this a part of your vocabulary you must begin using it. Think about the word as you're looking it up and dissecting the parts. How could you use the word at work? Where would it be used most appropriately? Try formulating a few sentences with the word. The next time you're in a conversation with someone, try using the new word. By using the words as soon as you can, you'll make them stick.

Improving your vocabulary you help you in your career and will also help if you will be taking college entrance exams. Whatever your purpose, you can expand your vocabulary painlessly and without even realizing you're doing it.