So many of my readers are interested in vocabulary building tips, and I've been trying to think of methods, other than just memorizing new words, that would help them--fast. Everyone wants everything instantly these days, if not sooner. Well, I truly cannot think of a better approach that will give you instant easy benefits than mastering a few Latin Root Words.

Now the Latin I'm talking about has nothing to do with "Latin" America or "Latino," regardless of my fondness for the place or people.

Latin Root Words Are the Roots of Most of Our English Words

The Latin I'm referring to here is the language spoken by the Romans thousands of years ago. OK, so why should we be interested in what is essentially a "dead" language since no one, except for college professors and students of the Classics, speak or read it?

First of all, that's not correct. The legal and medical professions rely heavily on Latin to transact their daily work. Law suits have Latin names (habeus corpus), pleadings have Latin names (nolo contendere), diseases have Latin names (lupus, diverticulitis). And these are important professions that intersect with the daily lives of ordinary people everywhere.

Take the word "vocabulary" itself. Break it down to its syllables: voc-ab-u-lary. Voc is the Latin root word for "call," and "-ular" is the Latin root for "of or relating to."

Once you get wised up to the Latin origins of words, you literally start seeing them everywhere and you are able to figure out the meaning of thousands of words that were previously, well, "Greek" to you (pardon the awful pun).

If You Know Just a Few, You've Already Increased Your Vocab by a Thousand Words

What I'm going to give you here is a small selection of Latin root words that will give you the biggest immediate payback in terms of expanding your vocabulary. At the end of this article I give you links to other great online places where you can find many more, including prefixes (parts of words--syllables-- that come at the beginning of the word) and suffixes (bits of words that come at the end of the word).

Check them out. You can make a game of this. Also your Scrabble scores will soar and your speed at doing crossword puzzles will accelerate to Mach 10.