Vocabulary Hack: How 5 words become 30!

142

I'm Rebecca from engVid, back with another vocabulary hack lesson.

Now, what is a "hack"?

A "hack" is a shortcut; a way for someone to learn to do something faster and more effectively.

And that's what you're going to do here - you're going to take actually a system to expand

your vocabulary, to multiply your vocabulary very easily and quickly.

The way we're going to do it today is by adding suffixes to nouns.

Now, what does all that mean?

Okay, so we're going to take a word.

Our sample word here is "power".

Now, "power" is a noun.

To that, we're going to add a suffix.

What's a "suffix"?

A "suffix" is just a group of letters that you add to the end of a word to change the

So, we have two suffixes, here: "ful" and "less".

When we add "ful" to the end of the word "power", we get the new word: "powerful".

And the suffix "f-u-l"-with only one "l", okay?

Don't get fooled-it means "full of" whatever; in this case, full of power, but when we spell

it, we add only one "l".

So it becomes one word: "powerful".

For example: "A powerful leader".

Or here's another suffix: "less".

When this word is added...

This suffix is added to the end of a word, it means without something.

So, when we add it to "power", we get: "powerless", which means without power.

This meant full of power; that means without power.

So, we could have "a powerful leader" or "a powerless leader".

We could be in "a powerful position" or "a powerless position".

Here we do write two "s'", but here remember only one "l".

Now, you can use these same suffixes to create hundreds of words.

And that's what I'm going to show you here.

Let's just look at some examples first.

You could say, for example...

Suppose we're talking about a message.

It could be "a thoughtful message" or "a thoughtless message"; "a useful idea" or "a useless idea".

A mean-...

We could say: "meaningful words" or "meaningless words".

We could say: "These are harmful products" or "harmless products".

"Harmful" - they cause harm, they do damage, they hurt you.

Or "harmless" - they don't hurt you.

So, you see the same pattern is being applied; the same rule - we're just adding "ful" or

"less" to the end of a noun.

Let's look at many more words now.

And let's go from here.

So, for example, we could talk...

We start with the nouns.

We have five nouns.

We're going to turn them into ten words.

So you're already multiplying your vocabulary.

"A careful driver" or "a careless driver".

"A powerful leader", as we said, or "a powerless leader".

"A fearful person" or "a fearless person".

In this case, without...

It's good to be fearless; "without fear" means that you are not afraid.

And "to be fearful" means you are afraid.

So, it doesn't mean that the word with "ful" is always the more positive or stronger word.

You have to look at: What's the noun?

If the noun is something positive, then when you're full of something positive, you're

going to be stronger.

But if the noun suggests a weakness, then when you're full of something you're going

to be less strong.

Let's continue.

Let's say you're talking about an operation: "A painful operation" or "a painless operation".

"A helpful person" or "a helpless person".

Did you get that?

Did you see that just by taking some nouns and adding "ful" or "less", we've come up

with adjectives now, and we've come up with not only one adjective per word, but two?

So we've already multiplied our words from five to 10.

Now let's see what happens next.

Ready for some more magic?

So, we started with five words, five nouns, then we turned them into ten with the adjectives,

now we're going to create adverbs from the same basic word.

How do we create an adverb?

Usually by adding "ly".

So, we could say, for example: "He drove carefully."

Or: "He drove carelessly".

"He led the country powerfully" or "He led the country powerlessly."

"He acted fearfully", "He acted fearlessly."

"She administered the injection painfully" or "She administered the injection painlessly."

What does it mean "to administer an injection"?

To give you an injection.

The thing we don't usually like too much.

And: "She acted very helpfully" or "She acted helplessly."

So, you see with the same basic noun we went to the adjective and now we have ten more

adverbs, so we went from five to ten, to twenty words that you know already.

But it's not just these words; this same principle applies to hundreds of words, and that's what

you can also check in the resource.

I'm not going to give you 100, but more than 50 words for sure.

You can look up lots and lots of examples, and you can apply this principle to expand

your vocabulary.

But it doesn't end there; we're going to go one step further.

We'll be right back.

Okay, so as you can see, our board is getting really full, and so is your mind, and so is

your vocabulary.

So, what happened now?

Now we've come back to add another noun from these suffixes.

From the suffixes that we created and added.

So, we have now: "carefulness", "carelessness".

So, the suffix we're adding here is "ness".

"Powerfulness", "powerlessness"; "fearfulness", "fearlessness"; "painfulness", "painlessness".

I hope you're saying these with me.

It's good practice for you to say them also because then you'll use them.

"Helpfulness" and "helplessness".

So, what happened?

Basically, by learning three suffixes...

So, "ful" and "less", right?

Then we learned "ly", and now we learned "ness".

So, we learned four suffixes, and we've created thirty more words from the original five.

But you can do that with so many words, as I've said.

But does it work with every word in English?

No, it doesn't.

So when I come back I'm going to show you some...

Some very common examples where we cannot do that, but you can do part of it, so let's

look at that next.

So, as I said, with some base words, you can only add "less" or "ful"; you cannot add both.

So, even though there are hundreds of words to which you can add both suffixes, there

are some words where you cannot.

So I'm going to give you some examples of those as well, just so that you understand.

So, for example, here we can only add "less".

If we want to describe a night without sleep, we can say...

Say it with me, okay?

A night without sleep is "a sleepless night".

Look how nice you sound, how advanced you sound.

Imagine writing like that in your exams, or on your IELTS, or your TOEFL, or your university

Immediately your language skills become much higher.

Let's continue.

A person without a home is a...

Say it with me: "a homeless person".

A performance without any flaws is "a flawless performance".

Now, look at the beauty of this.

Once you understand the principle, you can apply it-right?-even if you're not 100% sure

of what the word actually means.

You know if you saw the word "flawless" it means...

You know it means without something.

But just for you to know, in case you don't know, "flaw" means a mistake or an error,

so when you say that someone had a flawless performance, it means they had a performance

with no mistakes; no errors or no flaws.

So, an object with no worth is called "a worthless object".

A situation with no end is called "an endless situation".

Now we look at five more where the only suffix we can add is "ful"; we cannot add "less".

So, a painting with a lot of beauty is "a beautiful painting".

Just for you to know: Here, we change the spelling; we get rid of the "y" and we add

"i".

A place which has...

Which is full of peace is "a peaceful place".

An evening full of delight is "a delightful evening".

So, now number nine.

An experience full of fright, what do we say?

"A frightful experience".

A kitten full of play is "a playful kitten".

What's a "kitten"?

So, I hope you saw through this part of the lesson and all of the earlier parts of the

lesson that there are so many different words that you can create and multiply by using

this technique.

So, what do you do next?

Lots of things.

First go to our website: www.engvid.com; there you can download a resource with lots of words

exactly like this.

So that will help you to multiply your vocabulary so fast.

Next, you can also do a quiz while you're there to...

You know, to practice this technique a little bit; see how it works, and which words you

use with which other words, what collocations there are, how you can use them in your essays,

in your email, in your writing in general.

And you can also, please subscribe to my YouTube channel because that way you can continue

to get lots of vocabulary hacks and grammar hacks, and all kinds of hacks to help you

learn English more quickly and effectively.

Thanks very much for watching.