Discovering Words
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How do you extend your vocabulary? How can you exercise your brain whilst doing so, and does it work? Find out how puzzles can help.
James Marinero vocabulary building vocabulary on writing discovering words termagant fishwife
 how can puzzles help you discover words crosswords no, not argument puzzles i don&rsquo t like sudoku &ndash that&rsquo s kind of &lsquo zero sum&rsquo if you know what i mean sure, it works the brain, but always the same pathways and always the digits 0-9 i find them tiring to do, and ultimately pointless, in the way that going to the gym is pointless for me there are other more interesting ways of keeping the body fit &ndash cycling for instance the treadmaster and weights don&rsquo t interest me nor does a monthly subscription for the privilege sudoku is like the treadmill of the mind i know that others love sudoku and similar number games, and many enjoy the gym but for good mental exercise with the possibilities of new words, then it&rsquo s the crosswords, just in the same way as cycling offers new vistas while exercising the body crosswords open new pathways, give you the chance of uncovering a treasurable new word like treasurable &ndash or is that already a word yes it is i just checked that&rsquo s another subject, having a word named after you &ndash like newtonian mechanics, or brownian motion or calculus ok, newtonian and brownian are adjectival in nature, and i don&rsquo t think there&rsquo s anyone by the name of calculus &ndash i guess it&rsquo s just latin for calculating, or something mathematical my two years of latin in school didn&rsquo t take me that far the pubic wars, that&rsquo s all i can remember oh, and strange tenses how about first use of a word then william gibson invented the word &lsquo cyberspace&rsquo &ndash i believe the first known use of the word was in his novel &lsquo virtual light&rsquo how about that what a legacy to leave anyway, crossword puzzles, and the discovery of new words can you remember the first word you learned from a crossword and i don&rsquo t mean by checking the answers to the ones you couldn&rsquo t work out i mean a word you built up from the crumbs of the clue, to fit the rest of the words you sat back and looked at it, turned it around in your brain, wondered if it exists, rolled it off your tongue they don&rsquo t all roll off the tongue in a satisfying aural or lingual way, but my first one did i&rsquo m sure there&rsquo s a term for that &lsquo rolling off the tongue&rsquo , but i don&rsquo t know it termagant there, i&rsquo ve said it the scraps of the clue, the hints and the letters from the cross words literally , led me to the inescapable conclusion that the answer was &lsquo termagant&rsquo i wrote the letters in, with conviction, though it was at that time a strange, unheard and hitherto for me , unseen word i envisioned something with six or eight legs, though there was, literally, no clue to suggest that it must have been twenty years ago when i worked it out, and the clue which opened the door to that word is long forgotten fishwife, more or less, that&rsquo s what it means fishwife is in itself rather odd, as it has little to do with fish in one definition , though undoubtedly that is at the root of its etymology or am i being redundant termagant or fishwife, they are best avoided in real life &lsquo a woman regarded as coarse and shrewishly abusive&rsquo the definition certainly makes it a memorable word so, termagant was my first memorable discovery do you have any crossword clues are now a part of my daily ritual solving a few clues whilst i am eating breakfast gets my brain into gear for the day, and with that there&rsquo s always the tantalising possibility of a discovery i&rsquo ve discovered other words, but as with lovers, it&rsquo s always the first you remember provided, of course, you keep exercising your brain termagant