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Mind Map Handbook: The ultimate thinking tool. Tony Buzan
Читать онлайн.Название Mind Map Handbook: The ultimate thinking tool
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isbn 9780007494941
Автор произведения Tony Buzan
Жанр Личностный рост
Издательство HarperCollins
But words are in fact ‘wondrous’, ‘imaginative’, ‘sensual’, ‘sexy’, ‘warm’, ‘delicious’ and many other things which would make you lust after a relationship with anything or anyone possessing these qualities.
As soon as you start making friends with words, as babies do, they make friends with you, and allow you to meet, learn from and play with them much more rapidly and with thousands of times greater enjoyment and fun than before.
Persist in Your Pursuit of Verbal Power
Remember that one of the prime qualities used to describe the incredible intelligence and accomplishments both of babies and the great geniuses is that single word: persistence.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘persistence’ as meaning: ‘To continue firmly in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition; to continue to persist.’ It comes from the Latin ‘per’ and ‘sistere’ – ‘to stand firm’.
If you steadfastly pursue your goal of Verbal Intelligence, you will become much more Verbally Intelligent, and will approach the incredible skills of the baby and the genius in this area. Persist and you will overcome all obstacles to learning. Persist and your mistakes will turn into successes. Persist and you will acquire thousands of new word-friends. Persist!
The ideas in this chapter are summarized in Plate 9.
Word Power Booster Number 2
In this vocabulary booster section I introduce you to some fascinating adjectives. They will spice up your conversation, adding richness and depth to it. Choose the definition that you think is closest to the correct meaning from the four options given for each.
1 DIDACTIC (dy-dák-tik)
2 (a) Teacher-like; instructive
3 (b) Aggressive
4 (c) Explosive
5 (d) Like an extinct bird
6 SURREPTITIOUS (surep-tísh-us)
7 (a) Grey in colour
8 (b) Serrated
9 (c) Stealthy or secret
10 (d) Completely silent
11 HERETICAL (heh-rét-ikal)
12 (a) Deserving of punishment
13 (b) At the present time
14 (c) Greek behaviour
15 (d) Revolutionary; contrary to the official/established viewpoint
16 COPIOUS (kópe-eus)
17 (a) Able
18 (b) Abundant; plentiful
19 (c) Religious
20 (d) Relating to the police
21 IMPERATIVE (im-pé-rra-tif)
22 (a) Royal
23 (b) Relating to the empire
24 (c) Vital
25 (d) Strong
26 INEFFACEABLE (in-e-fáce-abul)
27 (a) To confront
28 (b) Incapable of being erased; indelible
29 (c) Female face
30 (d) Building
31 INESTIMABLE (in-ést-im-abul)
32 (a) Not enough time
33 (b) Priceless; immeasurable
34 (c) Unfriendly
35 (d) Timetable
36 UNPRECEDENTED (un-préss-e-den-ted)
37 (a) Never known or done before
38 (b) Description of dental procedures
39 (c) Damaged
40 (d) Before production
41 UNEQUIVOCAL (un-e-kwívo-cal)
42 (a) Different voices
43 (b) Unambiguous; leaving no doubt
44 (c) Unequal
45 (d) Discordant choir
46 CATEGORICAL (kata-górr-ical)
47 (a) Bluntly and unconditionally expressed
48 (b) Dividing into categories
49 (c) About cats
50 (d) Vaguely defined
2.3 Word Power I – Roots: How to Improve Your Vocabulary, Creativity, Memory and IQ!
‘Words are the instruments that make thought possible.’
Judd
‘Words are the body of thought.’
Carlyle
In this chapter and the next you are going to learn more about the incredible power of words.
I will guide you through recent history, showing you how words developed as a ‘secret power’, and will introduce you to research that show why this was so.
The bulk of this chapter and the next are then devoted to a veritable feast of building blocks of vocabulary and Verbal Intelligence: Roots, Prefixes and Suffixes.
With the mastery of these your Verbal Intelligence will inevitably improve, and your life will change irrevocably!
Words and Power
Since the dawn of civilization, words have had an aura of mystery, magic and power to them. The earliest form of writing (Cuneiform) developed in the Near East, in Mesopotamia, to allow rulers to keep accurate records of what taxes were due and who had paid them, and for other bureaucratic records, such as details of amounts of grain stored and distributed.
In ancient Egypt the priests were the ‘keepers of the word’. They tried to keep the art of writing and reading secret, because doing so gave them tremendous power to manipulate both knowledge and people. For the next four thousand years leaders in all societies kept this special power to themselves, communicating in the secret codes of higher vocabulary and writing, while the ignorant masses around reacted with awe, superstition and fear at the power that words held over them.
‘We rule men with words.’
Napoleon
This power was the power over knowledge; the power of persuasion; the power to inspire; the power to mesmerize; and the power to control and lead. In other words, it was the power to affect the human brain.
Two of our modern words, which you would never have thought would have derived from this history, do – ‘spell’ and ‘glamour’!
As recently as the great European Renaissance, the time of Queen Elizabeth I and the master-works of Shakespeare, still surprisingly few people could read or write. The record books show that most of the young people who had to sign for a marriage licence did so not with their name, but with a cross.
The ability to read and write was looked upon by the ordinary people with awe, and those who were able to do so were often considered to be dabbling in some form of magic. Those who could write could, in general, spell.
So the logic in the ignorant and fearful mind was that those who could spell possessed a magic that could mysteriously and ominously control others. As a word could be considered a ‘spell’ the owner of such esoteric knowledge, by using words, was ‘casting