The “Demon Word” Way: Build Your Vocabulary
By: Will Beebe
When I was 12 years old, I had an English class that I have never forgotten. I fell in love with the teacher, Miss Deborah Thomas, and not because she was an attractive single woman only a bit taller than me, but rather, it was because of her tremendous style of teaching. My favorite was a technique she used to help us build vocabulary, which she affectionately called “Demon Words”.
I was in my last year of elementary school at the John Fitch School in Windsor, Connecticut, in the northeastern USA. Windsor is called Connecticut’s first town, according to a bold sign 50 meters from our house on Island Road.
Windsor founded by Dutch traders who came up the Connecticut River from New York in 1633.
I had Miss Thomas as an English teacher simply by luck (you don’t choose your teachers; you are merely assigned to them). Yet, she was one of the reasons I went on to become an English teacher and writer.
Miss Thomas believed that you expanded your vocabulary by reading, writing, and practicing—a lot. Every day of school, we received a new “demon word” on the classroom board to put in our vocabulary journals. “Demon words” were difficult words that we needed to read, define, write down, and then practice in order to commit to memory. By the end of nine months of school, we had about 180 such devilish words in our journals, and I’m proud to say that I remembered and could use all of them in my conversation!
As an English learner, when you first encounter a word you don’t know:
1. You need to define it (or “look it up” in a dictionary)
2. Then write down an example, in your own words, if possible.
3. Third and the most important step is to use the word in conversation or writing—that day or soon after.
4. Finally, you have the word in your journal which makes for easy review as time goes on.
Have you ever looked up a word you didn’t know in a dictionary, only to encounter that very same word a month or so later, and not recall the meaning? I have! That’s probably because you and I didn’t take the third step, which was using that devious word in conversation or writing about our own lives. There has been an ample amount of research done about the “magic of three”, considered the number needed to memorize words, and other tidbits of information.
What is a “tidbit” you say? That’s a perfect example of one of Miss Thomas’s “demon words”:
(1.) Tidbit: ▸ noun: a small tasty bit of food
As adults, investigating the word’s origin, or etymology, may give you an intriguing story that will help you remember the word even better:
(2.) Word Origin: 1630s, probably from dialectal tid “fond, solicitous, tender” (perhaps by influence of tit (n.2)) + bit (n.1) “morsel.”
(3.) My Example for remembering this new word: “Today I had a tidbit of apple pie that was simply divine.”
In the final analysis, research has shown that one successful strategy, or method, for learning vocabulary is to learn a word and its opposite (also called its antonym) at the same time. This strategy is known as a hook or memory aid. If you can learn the word “legal”, and several synonyms to go with it like “permissible” and “allowable”, then you can also master “illegal”, “impermissible”, and “unallowable”. Don´t forget to write down your own examples in your “Demon Word” journal!
So, enjoy your next vocabulary journey. Take pleasure in your “Demon Word” journal, and soon you´ll be walking more easily through the garden of English.
