Don't be ambivalent in broaching power words
Vocabulary - Word maven Don Woodruff says you can sound smarter -- yet not pompous
Thursday, January 12, 2006 JOHN FOYSTON The Oregonian
Don Woodruff's 40 power words aren't the flashy, five-buck words often found in build-a-bigger-vocabulary programs. "They're more like $3.50 words," he said in a recent phone interview from his home
base in Rochester, N.Y. "They're words that sparkle. They make you sound subtly more intelligent without sounding pompous." They're words that you can use in actual conversations "in the boardroom or
the lunchroom," Woodruff says. Ambivalent, antithesis, broach, pragmatic . . . there, that's 10 percent of the list that Woodruff will teach in an upcoming class at Portland Community College. He
tours the United States and Canada, speaking and teaching classes. Portland is a regular stop, thanks in part to a sister who lives on Sauvie Island. "The class isn't necessarily about 40 words, and
these aren't magic words," Woodruff said. (Knowing that, we'll let fly with a couple more: ramification, pensive, perused.) "What happens in the class is that adult students learn a new way of
learning, a way to put these words in a part of the brain that can't forget them." Perhaps you've already affirmed for yourself the tests that show our language-acquisition skills peak at about 13
and decline thereafter as the brain devotes more space and computing power to remembering its owner's wedding anniversary and where he left his car keys. But Woodruff's words are chosen to allow
people to learn, remember and use them effectively. They can be simplified to their (usually) Greek or Latin roots, Woodruff said. Students lock words into their memories by relating each word to
their own experiences: "I had ambivalent feelings about the algebra pop quiz" or "The interview was almost over when I broached the tough subject of salary." (Remuneration, for the record, appears on
neither the list of 40 nor the follow-up list of 20 power words.) Do this three times for each word, Woodruff said, and you own the word. "It's not rote memorization," he said, "not like one of those
600-word vocabulary-building programs that most people maybe listen to the first disc and then never use again. These are words you can use every day." And just who is the arbiter of what is and
isn't a power word? Computer programs that relentlessly sift through articles found in The New York Times and up-market magazines to determine which words appear and how often. Woodruff distilled a
list of 1,200 such words further by making sure that each appeared in the top three commercial vocabulary programs. To weed out Johnny-come-lately neologisms, he checks that the candidates appeared
in a couple of vocabulary programs from the 1980s. It's a lot of work, Woodruff said, and he could be making more money running his own marketing firm like he used to. "But I'm passionate about this
because this is such a powerful learning tool for all the people who're like I was. I wasn't an especially good student." Formidable, as the French might say. That's on the list, too, Woodruff might
say.
John Foyston: 503-221-8368; johnfoyston@neews.oregonian.com �2006 The Oregonian
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