Introduction
A “good vocabulary” means more than big words. Before explaining this statement, we need to define what "vocabulary" means.
What does "vocabulary" mean?
A “vocabulary” actually comprises 4 different kinds of vocabulary. The different types of vocabulary are:
- aural vocabulary — the words you hear;
- reading vocabulary — the words you read;
- spoken vocabulary — the words you speak; and
- writing vocabulary — the words you write.
The 4 kinds of vocabularies overlap, but no 2 of them are the same. For example, you might not use in your own writing a word you read in a book or hear someone say; it requires much less effort to understand a spoken or written word than it does to use that same word effectively. (Deighton, 1960). According to Simpson (2009), a word must be used in context 40 times before you can master that word and its meaning.
What is a "good" vocabulary?
A “good” vocabulary is both a wide vocabulary and a deep vocabulary.
A wide vocabulary refers to the number of words you know. According to a well-known lexicographer of the 1920s, Dr Frank Horace
Vizetelly, English has around 1 million words. The average person uses
only 4,000 to 5,000 of these words; "educated" people know 8,000 to
10,000 words. The occupations with the widest vocabulary are doctors
and lawyers, who average around 23,000 words. (For a rough guide on the
size of your vocabulary, try a Vizetelly's vocabulary test.)
But estimates of the size of the English language, and estimates of the size of someone's vocabulary, vary widely. Estimates vary because of differences in what is counted as a single word. Do we count derivatives? Do we count compounds? Do we count technical terms? Do we count slang, archaic words, and foreign derivatives? (Simpson, 2009).
A deep vocabulary means how well you know the meanings of words in your vocabulary. Most words have more than one meaning. The more common the word, in general, the greater its number of meanings and the more dangerous the word can be:
- “The really serious misunderstandings … concern those words we all think we do really know — the familiar, the friendly, incessantly useful key words in every third sentence. In general the more useful a word the more dangerous it can be.” (IA Richards and C Gibson, 1945).
Also, many common words have infrequently used meanings. Other common words have a special meaning in law, science, and other specialist fields. It is a mistake, therefore, to think that a word has a single meaning and wrong to equate a “good vocabulary” with size without also considering depth:
- “Size of vocabulary is akin to speed in reading: it is part of the solution of the problem, but it is not the entire solution. Indeed, as with speed in reading, our concern over the problem may have caused us to exaggerate the importance of the number of words a student knows. Size is important — yes; but of equal importance, possibly of greater importance, is the accurate use of words.” (Frank Heys Jr, 1963).
A really good vocabulary also involves knowing a word’s sound, history, and associations. It is also worth knowing how great writers, such as Shakespeare, have used the word. Overall, a person with a "good vocabulary" has the ability to use the right word in the right place at the right time.
How do you get a good vocabulary?
All this begs the question: how does someone acquire a good vocabulary?
Other articles on the Write Better English website address this question. But the quickest, easiest, and most cost-effective way of improving your vocabulary that we have found is by using the popular Ultimate Vocabulary software.
Ultimate Vocabulary expands both the width of your vocabulary and the depth of your vocabulary. The software also helps you learn a word’s sound through audio pronunciations, history and associations through an etymology database, and the use that has been made by the word through a database of example sentences for each word you are learning — so that you can see the word in context. Ultimate Vocabulary helps you to use the right word in the right place at the right time.
References
Lee C Deighton, “Developing Vocabulary: Another Look at the Problem” (1960) 49(2) The English Journal 82
Frank Heys Jr, “Means of Vocabulary Development” (1963) 6(2) Journal of Developmental Reading 140
IA Richards and C Gibson, Learning Basic English (1945)
Troy Simpson, "The Art of Written Persuasion: Improve Your Vocabulary, Improve Your Success", (2009), LLRX.com (accessed 26 September 2009)