As children we all had to study for and take “vocabulary tests” — learning a new list of words, their spelling and definitions, every week. As we continued on in school, read more books and studied more subjects, our vocabulary naturally expanded. Then to get into college, we took SATs (Scholastic Aptitude Tests), some of the most important of which are called “Vocab Tests.”
Building up our word bank is a never completed project. Best-selling author Bill O’Reilly even has a vocab test every night on his #1 Cable News show, “The O’Reilly Factor.” The great thing about a truly “living language”, like English, is that it is always changing, adopting, adapting, and adding new words, new concepts, new elements.
How many words do you use in everyday discussions in 2014 that a few years ago wou…