Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Dictionary.com Is My Friend

I remember the days when Tina and I tried to memorize vocabulary words for the SATs. I got up to the word, "abate." Yeah, that was like the third word on the list. But I always remembered what it meant. =) Teachers and my parents would say that I should get in the habit of looking words up as I am reading books or magazines or whatever. But I didn't care about vocabulary. It was so boring.

Now years later, I've found that words are important to me. Important for my education. My job. This blog. I look words up on dictionary.com almost everyday. I want to know more words and definitions and idioms. Yeah, I am a big ol' nerd! And I am proud of it.

My vocabulary was so limited before. There were a lot of common words that I didn't know. I am sheepish to admit it. Furthermore, there were a lot of words I didn't know how to pronounce. Dictionary.com has this neat function where you can hear the pronunciation. One day in a panic, I thought I had been pronouncing "comparable" and "applicable" wrong for years. After I looked it up, I realized that they had two pronunciations. Whew! I thought I was a big idiot. Well, I am but not for that.

Oh, and I have another dictionary I use all the time. My husband. When I am at home blogging, I often randomly ask him to spell something for me or ask if I used a word in the right context. He is so helpful...and wonderful too. He's such a smartie. And he doesn't say "you're an idiot" when I ask him to spell words like "whine." (Haha! It looked weird, okay?!) He's my kind of nerd.

4 comments:

Laura said...

Yeah.. Tina is always appalled at my poor spelling. I'll ask her to help me spell simple words sometimes! Ah! She gets equally as outraged as we get when you try to speak in an English accent. Tehe.

Tara said...

Bollocks!

Vanessa said...

For the longest time, I thought 'ventilation' was pronounced 'venilation'. I just thought everyone else was saying it wrong...whoops. But I must say, I am an eerily impeccable speller. I don't even have to know what the word means, but I can spell it for you!

Tara said...

Oh, now you're just a braggart. Wait, did I spell that right?