If you read a word and you dont know what is means do you look it up?

Question

And do you think it is strange to do so?

i just looked up the word solipsist cause i read it somewhere else on this website. And is occurred to me that this may be strange to some people. That is why i asked the question. How great is it that thier are online dictionary it only takes a few seconds to look up words now?

and by the way i dont consider words that i can decifer the meaning of by the sentence words i dont know.

Answer 1

if i cant figure it out by the surrounding words, then yes i look it up, especially if the work is homework involved

Answer 2

Wel actually, language is such that you can usually infer the meaning of the word from the context it is being used.

Where it appears in a sentence will tell you whether it is a noun, verb or adjective etc so that will usually allow you to decipher meaning from it.

Then if you are already a proficient speaker or reader in the language, looking at the root word will usually give you another big clue as to what the word is.

More often than not, I don't check up the words unless I really can't fgure out what it is, because I'd rather get on with reading the story. But there is truly nothing wrong with checking out words you do not know.

In fact, it is a good habit.

Answer 3

I look it up if I do not know what it means. Is not strange, that's why we have dictionarys. Of course to some people today it may seem strange that 20 years ago in school and at home that is what we did.

Now they can look up words online, So times have changed.

Answer 4

I try to get clues about a word meaning by determining out how it is used in the sentence. If that doesnt help, I have no problem looking it up. That is not strange at all. It is pretty smart, if you ask me.

Answer 5

Yes, I always look up a word when I don't know what it means. I do not think that is strange, because my parents and aunts/uncles always did the same thing.

Answer 6

I look at the sentence it is in to try to figure out what it means. Sometimes, if the word seems important and is used more than once, I do look it up. But that seldomly happens because I can usually figure it out after seeing it in different sentences and stuff

Answer 7

Not strange at all. That's the best way to learn. It's a practice that seems to have been lost for some time, but I do it every day

Answer 8

Yes

Answer 9

Yes, I often do. No, I do not think that it is strange, especially now that it can be done quickly with an on-line dictionary.

Answer 10

Usually I can work out the gist of a word from the sentence, but otherwise I'll look it up... unless I'm too far away from my dictionary. Hell, I even wiki unfamiliar references people make when I'm chatting on msn. (*looks mildly embarrassed*)

Answer 11

Not unless I am interested in using it myself later on. One can get some sort of an idea of meaning of a word when it's placed in a sentence.