You may think the order of our study should be reversed. No great harm would result if it were. The learning of individual words and the combining of them into sentences are parallel rather than successive processes. In our babyhood we do not accumulate a large stock of terms before we frame phrases and clauses. And our attainment of the power of continuous iteration does not check our inroads among individual words. We do the two things simultaneously, each contributing to our success with the other. There are plenty of analogies for this procedure. A good baseball player, for instance, tirelessly studies both the minutiae of his technique (as how to hold a bat, how to stand at the plate) and the big combinations and possibilities of the game. A good musician keeps unremitting command over every possible touch of each key and at the same time seeks sweeping mastery over vast and complex harmonies. So we, if we would have the obedience of our vocabularies, dare not lag into desultory attention to either words when disjoined or words as potentially combined into the larger units of thought and feeling.
We might therefore consider either the individuals first or the groups first. But the majority of speakers and writers pay more heed to rough general substance than to separate instruments and items. Hence we have thought best to begin where most work is going on already—with words in combination.
As you turn from the groups to the individuals, you must understand that your labors will be onerous and detailed. You must not assume that by nature all words are much alike, any more than you assume that all men are much alike. Of course the similarities are many and striking, and the fundamental fact is that a word is a word as a man is a man. But you will be no adept in handling either the one or the other until your knowledge goes much farther than this. Let us glance first at the human variations. Each man has his own business, and conducts it in his own way—a way never absolutely matched with that of any other mortal being. All this you may see. But besides the man's visible employment, he may be connected in devious fashions with a score of enterprises the public knows nothing about. Furthermore he leads a private life (again not precisely corresponding to that of any other), has his hobbies and aversions, is stamped with a character, a temperament of his own. In short, though in thousands of respects he is like his fellows, he has after all no human counterpart; he is a distinct, individual self. To know him, to use him, to count upon his service in whatsoever contingency it might bestead you, you must deem him something more than a member of the great human family. You must cultivate him personally, cultivate him without weariness or stint, and undergo inconvenience in so doing.
Even so with a word. Commonplace enough it may seem. But it has its peculiar characteristics, its activities undisclosed except to the curious, its subtle inclinations, its repugnances, its latent potentialities. There is no precise duplicate for it in all the wide domain of language. To know it intimately and thoroughly, to be on entirely free terms with it, to depend upon it just so far as dependence is safe, to have a sure understanding of what it can do and what it cannot, you must arduously cultivate it. Words, like people, yield themselves to the worthy. They hunger for friendship—and lack the last barrier of reserve which hedges all human communion. Thus, linguistically speaking, you must search out the individuals. You must step aside from your way for the sake of a new acquaintance; in conversations, in sermons, in addresses, in letters, in journalistic columns, in standard literature you must grasp the stranger by the hand and look him straight in the eye. Nor must you treat cavalierly the words you know already. You must study them afresh; you must learn them over and learn them better; you must come to understand them, not only for what they are, but for what they will do.
<What Words to Learn First>
What, then, is your first task? Somebody has laid down the injunction— and, as always when anything is enjoined, others have given it currency— that each day you should learn two new words. So be it,—but which two? The first two in the dictionary, or hitherto left untouched in your systematic conquest of the dictionary? The first two you hear spoken? The first two that stare at you from casual, everyday print? The first two you can ferret from some technical jargon, some special department of human interest or endeavor? In any of these ways you may obey the behest of these mentors. But are not such ways arbitrary, haphazard? And suppose, after doing your daily stint, you should encounter a word it behooves you to know. What then? Are you to sulk, to withhold yourself from further exertion on the plea of a vocabulary-builder's eight-hour day?
To adopt any of the methods designated would be like resolving to invest in city lots and then buying properties as you encountered them, with no regard for expenditure, for value in general, or for special serviceability to you. Surely such procedure would be unbusinesslike. If you pay out good money, you meditate well whether that which you receive for it shall compensate you. Likewise if you devote time and effort to gaining ownership of words, you should exercise foresight in determining whether they will yield you commensurate returns.
What, then, is the principle upon which, at the outset, you should proceed? What better than to insure the possession of the words regarding which you know this already, that you need them and should make them yours?
<The Analysis of Your Own Vocabulary>
The natural way, and the best, to begin is with an analysis of your own vocabulary. You are of course aware that of the enormous number of words contained in the dictionary relatively few are at your beck and bidding. But probably you have made no attempt to ascertain the nature and extent of your actual linguistic resources. You should make an inventory of the stock on hand before sending in your order for additional goods.