This is your sign to start writing a list of the new words you learn from reading. I’ve been doing this for a long time and only just recently read through the entire thing. I’m realizing how much I learned and how many cool words I’ve forgotten about.
I started my list when I was 12/13 and I’m 17 now, so I have over 1200 words on my list. Admittedly when I was 15 I was weirdly obsessed with reading the dictionary so a good chunk of my list is from that (I can tell which ones because they’re in alphabetical order lmaoo) but the dictionary is still a book so…
It’s super cute and nostalgic to read through the list, my first words were stuff like jaded, cynical, mirth, vehement, irate. Those words are so familiar to me now that it’s hard to imagine not knowing them.
I know when my project Gutenberg Victorian novel craze happened because I get words like, infelicities, impedimenta, legerdemain, noctambulist, and éclaircissement
I have preternatural from an Anne Rice novel, logorrhoea from A Kiss Before Dying and syndic from Frankenstein. Dracula gives Jonathan Harker a basilisk stare, and Angel Clare compares Tess of D'urbervilles to a Praxitelean statue. I believe I read a Margaret Atwood short story where she described a coffee machine as obstetrical , which was a weird introduction to the word.
And more great words I never use: Xanadu, a kind of paradise or ideal place, Callipygian , having a nice butt, Milquetoast, feeble or bland.
Honestly our brains aren’t going to store every word we come across, so it’s just a huge store of knowledge you can come back to at any time. I wrote the definitions for a good chunk of them next to the words.
I mean you’ll probably remember what irate means, because you’ll see it again, but I’m not too sure I’ll come across Callipygian again. I honestly wish I could remember what book I read that in — I’m pretty sure it was funny.
by ImportunateRaven