Guess the Correct Meaning of Words

Do you want to be able to correctly guess the meaning of unknown words in those novels and opposite or nearest in meaning questions?

Hello scholar,

Welcome to the simplest lesson on how to guess the CORRECT meaning of unfamiliar words in 2 minutes using three simple methods without the dictionary.

Guessing the meaning of unknown words

Let’s take an example.

Choose the nearest in meaning to the word in italic.

His father surmounted the “myriad” of obstacles on his way.

A. few
B. many
C. some
D. little

#1. Use context clues in the sentence

Context refers to the words or sentences before or after that big word in the sentence.

Let’s say you’ve never known the meaning of “myriad” but there are two other prominent words in that sentence that can give you a clue.

These words are:

• surmounted
• obstacles

“Surmounted” means “overcame” and it is often used when what is spoken of is great in size or number.

“Obstacles” mean “difficulties” and it is in plural form which shows that it was more than just one.

So from this context,

You can correctly guess that since the “obstacles” were much, the meaning of “myriad” would be similar to MUCH.

#2. Use the elimination method

This method is only useful when options of answers are provided, especially in Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs).

It involves cancelling out some ridiculous or two or more similar options.

Our sample question is asking for the nearest in meaning to the word “myriad”.

Which means only 1 option out of 4 is the correct answer, so the other 3 options are either opposite in meaning or irrelevant.

Cancel out those options that are either opposite or irrelevant to the question and you’d be left with the correct answer or at least fewer options to choose from.

Let’s see the options in our sample question again…

• few
• many
• some
• little

“few, some and little” are so similar that you can’t pick one and leave the others.

But “many” is not so similar with the others and that makes it stand out as your correct nearest in meaning to “myriad“.

#3. Break down the word

There are cases were words are given in isolation, i.e. without context.

These words are often longer due to the attachment of prefixes (…at the beginning) or suffixes (…at the end) to the root word.

So the best method in this situation is to break up the prefix – root word – suffix and understand each separately before combining their meanings together.

I love this method, especially when teaching Biology with various terminologies.

For example…REPRODUCTION!

• Re– (prefix) which means “again”.
• Production (main word) = “produce” which means “to make”.

Practice questions on how to guess the correct meaning of unfamiliar words

HAPPY LEARNING.

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