INTRODUCTION
to the Second Edition
Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder is designed to achieve two goals:
(1) to add a large number of words to your permanent working vocabulary,
and (2) to teach the most useful of the classical word-building roots to help
you continue expanding your vocabulary in the future.
To achieve these goals, Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder employs
an original approach that takes into account how people learn and
remember. Some vocabulary builders simply present their words in
alphabetical order; some provide little or no discussion of the words and
how to use them; and a few even fail to show the kinds of sentences in
which the words usually appear. But memorizing a series of random and
unrelated things can be difficult and time-consuming. The fact is that we
tend to remember words easily and naturally when they appear in some
meaningful context, when they've been shown to be useful and therefore
worth remembering, and when they've been properly explained to us.
Knowing precisely how to use a word is just as important as knowing what
it means.
Greek and Latin have been the sources of most of the words in the
English language (the third principal source being the family of Germanic
languages). All these words were added to the language long after the fall
of the Roman empire, and more continue to be added to this day, with most
new words—especially those in the sciences—still making use of Greek
and Latin roots. A knowledge of Greek and Latin roots will not only help
you remember the meanings of the words in this book but will help you
guess at the meanings of new words that you run into elsewhere. Remember
what a root means and you'll have at least a fighting chance of
understanding a word in which it appears.
The roots in this book are only a fraction of those that exist, but they
include almost all the roots that have produced the largest number of
common English words. All these roots (sometimes called stems) formed
parts of Greek and Latin words. Some are shown in more than one form (for
example, CRAC/CRAT), which means that they changed form in the
original language, just as buy and bought are forms of the same English
word.
