Flow,
I stick with my friend's opinion that truly increasing vocabulary means just reading more books.
He reads all the time, and his vocab is pretty high (he got a perfect score on his verbal SAT). His view is that when a word is used in context of a sentence, and the sentence is used in context of a paragraph in context of a story, you will understand how that word is used better (after you look it up). He also never read any books on improving vocabulary.
I tend to go this way too, since I am really careful on using a word I'm not completely sure about. I had this one ex-girlfriend who thought the word "modest" meant "cocky". I'm SERIOUS. I tried to show her in the dictionary, and she totally skewed the definition and actually believed she was right.
The funny thing is, she'd look smarter because of it. She'd say something like, "Yeah, I'm really really good at this and that. I know, I must sound SO modest right now." People would laugh, thinking she was being clever. Then I would be like, "Oh geez...she doesn't...ah, forget it."
Then we went to the same college together, lived in the same dorm, and on the same floor. She cheated on me for the guy who lived across the hall from her, and I found out because I went to check on her, and someone told me she was last in his room. I checked his room, and long story short she was hiding behind his door and he had no shirt on.
That's also the day I got some strange reputation for being in an Asian gang. I don't know why.
I love college.
-Ramon http://razor.ramon.com
