Tip For Synonyms And Antonyms

[Ainuddin Kibzai]

I have got a piece of advice based on personal experience for the Vocabulary-concerned members.
The very first two questions of the English Composition paper comprise of Synonyms and Antonyms.
It really is a tough and toiling task remembering all the vocabulary and recalling those during the exams.
I have an idea to share if it looks congenial to you.
You will be surprised to know that the real English words are merely 50 % while the remaining are composed with the addition of either a prefix ( the word that is written before the original word. e.g. un, in, im, etc.) and suffix ( the word that is written after the original word. e.g. less, ale, ily, etc.)
The main thing you need to learn is the root word which gives birth to numerous words.
For instance, the word "vid" generally refers to "view". If you know this thing then you can easily understand meanings of the words you have never heard or read before. e.g. video. vision, visual. evidence. and many more such words which will give you the sense of the word.
I repeatedly quote that half of the words for better understandings of English are merely a guess work which you can learn by knowing the word etymology.
So for the quick reading of editorial, make use of guess-work by using common sense and etymology.
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.
Here again I quote that I had never studied etymology at all but had good common sense of comparing different words and taking out the similarities.
Nothing is easy or difficult to study. All I know is easy to me and vice versa.
It also needs one's personal interest as well to develop the skill.
Developing the skill of etymology needs your keen observation along with little effort.
Another example for etymology is as follows.
The words such as spectacle, spectrum, prospect, aspect, spectacular, inspection, inspector, etc, have some thing in common and that is "spec". So one can easily develop the sense that all these words have more or less the similar meanings having a common word among them.
All have some connection, one way or the other, with the meaning "view".
Hence, one can easily guess the meanings of various bizarre words one comes across during composition paper.
Regards,
Ainuddin Kibzai.

[Sehrish Munawar]

lag to theek interesting raha ha,,, bur hum Etymology kahan se study kariean??? well i will chk then tell u
Thanks!

[Ainuddin Kibzai]

Originally Posted by Sehrish Munawar

lag to theek interesting raha ha,,, bur hum Etymology kahan se study kariean??? well i will chk then tell u
Thanks!

There are numerous websites on the internet that will help you in this very quest of Etymology.

[MisbahMalik]

One I tried Etymology in my class. The word I came across was 'logistic' & I incurred its meaning from the word ‘logic’
& raised the question related to the topic in class. Damn! Imagine the scenario ...

Etymology never worked for me.

[shahmalik]

Originally Posted by MisbahMalik

One I tried Etymology in my class. The word I came across was 'logistic' & I incurred its meaning from the word ‘logic’
& raised the question related to the topic in class. Damn! Imagine the scenario ...

Etymology never worked for me.

No Doubt, english is confusing language and its very hard to have a strong grip over the origin and etymology considering the environment we live in, however practice and effort will do wonders obviously.
@ Misbah , Regarding ur effort, i believe u were quite right, correct me if i am wrong, "logistic" and "logistics" are completely different entities.

Logistic, literally is symbolic logic, relating to philosophical attempt to reduce mathematics to logic. In wider spectrum, it is used for a singular aspect of logistics as well.

However, logistics is details of handling operations,normally for military purposes and generally for any project concerning the procurement and transportation of hardware, material and equipment, sometimes vaguely used for human resource as well. Saman-e-rasdd ( in urdu ).

Some might disagree, but this is my 2 cents.

@kibzai, man, like ur other posts in english portion, this one was spot on and i got to admit, u have interestingly acute & rational opinion, hats off. Your posts are extremely helpful. I just need to have a second opinion on my strategy for 2012, i have compiled and solved the last 10 years papers for synonyms,antonyms,idioms and pairs of words. 30% were found repeated, which is not a very healthy figure. Keeping in view the paucity of time, how can i enhance my chances ? I will be grateful for a 2-min quick crasher sort of thing. ( GRE prefixes and suffixes family trees are gone through ).

[Ainuddin Kibzai]

Originally Posted by shahmalik

No Doubt, english is confusing language and its very hard to have a strong grip over the origin and etymology considering the environment we live in, however practice and effort will do wonders obviously.
@ Misbah , Regarding ur effort, i believe u were quite right, correct me if i am wrong, "logistic" and "logistics" are completely different entities.

Logistic, literally is symbolic logic, relating to philosophical attempt to reduce mathematics to logic. In wider spectrum, it is used for a singular aspect of logistics as well.

However, logistics is details of handling operations,normally for military purposes and generally for any project concerning the procurement and transportation of hardware, material and equipment, sometimes vaguely used for human resource as well. Saman-e-rasdd ( in urdu ).

Some might disagree, but this is my 2 cents.

@kibzai, man, like ur other posts in english portion, this one was spot on and i got to admit, u have interestingly acute & rational opinion, hats off. Your posts are extremely helpful. I just need to have a second opinion on my strategy for 2012, i have compiled and solved the last 10 years papers for synonyms,antonyms,idioms and pairs of words. 30% were found repeated, which is not a very healthy figure. Keeping in view the paucity of time, how can i enhance my chances ? I will be grateful for a 2-min quick crasher sort of thing. ( GRE prefixes and suffixes family trees are gone through ).

Dear Bro.
I am really honored by the respect you have have paid me for the little experience i had for sharing.
I believe in doing the basics right and keeping the rules simple. To me, consistency matters the most irrespective of the quantity.
As far ad synonyms and antonyms are concerned, I would advise you to go for 10 etymologies a day ( on regular basis ). By the start of the exams, you will have learnt at least 400 etymologies of various words. It would be sheer bad luck if you still could not solve the synonyms and antonyms.
While as long as idioms go, just learn 5 idioms a day. It will give you some sort of idea as to what they are really meant for. Because my personally experience says that Idioms are, more or less, a guess work. You can guess the meaning of more than 50 % of the idioms if you have some sort of common sense. For instance, the idiom " at arm's length ", clearly depicts the thing being easily reachable.
For pair of words, you have to play a kind of trick with the examiner, something I successfully played many times. In pair of words, I always knew the meanings of at least one from the pair while the other one was either a bit ambiguous or totally bizarre. I beautifully and skilfully wrote the sentence with the words i knew in such a way as to gice the examiner a glimpse that the meaning is quite clear to me. While withe other weaker of the two, I adopted the different strategy by toying with the examiner's mind since I myself have been checking papers of Intermediate level.
Regards,
Ainuddin Kibzai.

[MisbahMalik]

Originally Posted by shahmalik

No Doubt, english is confusing language and its very hard to have a strong grip over the origin and etymology considering the environment we live in, however practice and effort will do wonders obviously.
@ Misbah , Regarding ur effort, i believe u were quite right, correct me if i am wrong, "logistic" and "logistics" are completely different entities.

According to my understanding ‘logistic’ is an adjective
whereas ‘logistics’ is a noun which means transportation of goods or materials.

In my above post I meant ‘logistics’ and its ‘Once’ not ‘one’ … typing mistake.

[Sehrish Munawar]

agree with MisbahMalik and ShahMalik ,,, i also search some words today,,
but i think its not helpful to know k etymology of word to solve Synonyms And Antonyms,,,,,
( wasy yeh b ho sakta ha,,k mj ko sahe se samjh he na aa rahe ho )

[Ainuddin Kibzai]

Originally Posted by Sehrish Munawar

agree with MisbahMalik and ShahMalik ,,, i also search some words today,,
but i think its not helpful to know k etymology of word to solve Synonyms And Antonyms,,,,,
( wasy yeh b ho sakta ha,,k mj ko sahe se samjh he na aa rahe ho )

Look. This is an example for what I have said.
Gamy means marriage.
Poly means many.
Homo means same.
Mono means one.
Polygamy means many marriages.
Monogamy means one marriage.
Homogamy means marriage among same sex.
The word Gamy is derived from the word Gamete.

[anastasia]

this is called word root method..it is one of the vocabulary building techniques for GAT preparation too..
In this method..There's a root word which has sense or meanings which make a sense among the other words..
For example
Root: Anti
Sense: Against
Examples:
Antibody
antidote
antipodal
antiseptic
All these words have some type of link in sense
If you use GAT books or websites you can improve your vocabulary