A weekly Journal of Toastmaster International-Philippines Picking the Right Word

CEBU, Philippines - Picking the right words for a speech is crucial there’s even a speech project to practice this in the Competent Communication manual  but here I’m talking about picking the right word. The right word of the day.

In a typical Toastmasters meeting, the grammarian picks a word of the day that club members are encouraged to use. Some clubs even appoint a Wordmaster. But how do the people filling those roles find the right word?

You could pick up a dictionary, close your eyes, open it to a page and plant your finger on any random word, but this may lead to less than exciting results. There are better ways. Here are some tips to help you select precisely the right word.

Not Too Easy

The idea behind choosing a word of the day is to introduce club members to a new word. This word becomes familiar to us and a part of our vocabulary after repeating it in the meeting.

Avoid everyday words. At one meeting in my club, the grammarian picked the word “success” as the word of the day. It is a good word, but perhaps not a good pick for the word of the day. Chances are everyone in your club is already familiar with the word. Why not pick something a little more distinctive? Say, “eminence.” With a little help from dictionary.com, this word might be presented as:

eminence [em-uh-nuhÿns], noun

1. high station, rank, or repute… . From Latin “eminentia” (to stand out)

As a rule of thumb, if you came across a word in a magazine or a newspaper that you had to look up in a regular dictionary — and you found it there — it is the right level of difficulty. Using this rule of thumb would give you a “Goldilocks” word: not too easy, not too hard, but just right.

Not Too Hard (or Too Specific)

While you don’t want to pick a word that everyone is familiar with, you don’t want to pick a completely esoteric word either. “Etherloop” may be a worthwhile term for computer networking specialists to know, but for the average person, it’s too specific to that field to be useful. Jargon, specialized vocabulary and technical terms are best skipped when choosing a word of the day.

What to Include

Once you have your word — for example, “lapidary”— print it for display at the club meeting. Remember to include the following:

Pronunciation

lapidary [lap-i-der-ee], adjective

Definition

There’s no need to include all possible meanings of the term; give only the most common meanings.

For “lapidary,” the following short definition should suffice: Having elegance, precision or refinement suggestive of gem cutting.

Origin

If you know the root of a term, you can figure out related words, even if you have not come across them earlier. It’s not necessary to give detailed etymology, but a brief mention of the term’s origin is helpful.

From Latin “lapis” (stone)

A complete example would be:

claque (klak), noun

A group of people hired to applaud at a performance.

From French “claquer” (to clap)

Variations

Instead of having one word, you could have variations. For example:

- Feature a pair of words that are often confused such as allusion (indirect reference) and illusion (false appearance)

- Present a word of the day — for example, the verb “castigate” (to criticize severely) — and encourage club members to use the word or its various forms: castigated and castigatory (adjective), castigation and castigator (noun), and castigatingly (adverb).

Preparing the Display

Come up with a usage example, or two, to illustrate the word while introducing it at the beginning of the meeting. Do not include an example sentence on the printed sheet. Print the word, its pronunciation, definition and origin in letters large enough to be visible from the back of the room.

Where to Find Words

It’s a good idea to record new words as you come across them in your daily reading that may include newspapers, magazines, blogs and memos. Over time this record you have created can serve as a nice go-to place to find words.

U.S. clergyman, speaker and author Henry Ward Beecher once said, “All words are pegs to hang ideas on.” Selecting the right words will help your club members find just the right peg for their ideas.