Irrespective of the effort one puts in, it isn’t really possible to memorise the meaning of every single word in the English dictionary. The struggle becomes more difficult with words that sound or are spelled together. Therefore GRE applicants often take up a different approach which is to follow the etymology of words to ensure that they enhance their vocabulary to a bigger extent.

Using an etymology dictionary

An etymology dictionary will give the applicant a chance to learn more about word roots and their meanings. Those who are interested in vocabulary will vouch for the fact that once applicants know about the word roots, guessing meanings of other derived words given multiple choices would become easier. In fact, the etymology dictionary will help applicants appreciate how a lot of words are interconnected thanks to their roots. Word Power Made Easy or Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary by Klein could be couple of books that will help students understand more about etymology.

Deriving words through practice

Even when one is not thorough with etymology of words, practice can help them to a great extent. In fact, quite a few words consist of multiple components each referring to their own root. So often deriving words is much more about spotting just one root word. A good example is apprehensive, which could be broken into ad and ‘prehendere’ or can be derived from apprehendere. Applicants must also appreciate the fact that roots of words are not always from the same language. Different word roots could originate from different backgrounds and this could often lead to conflicting situations. So, applicants need to be sure of how they derive word meanings. Read more…