Basic Word List

For much of the 1990s I carried a series of pocket-sized address books for organizing words alphabetically. Whenever I encountered a word that I thought my students should know, I wrote it down. From that collection, I constructed a basic set of 360 words. I chose 360 for those who'd like a year's worth of words of the day (with time off for holy days of obligation). 

I sorted the words into six chapters of 60 words each. Each chapter is identified by a belt: yellow, orange, green, blue, brown, and black. The words progress in syllable length from terse to sesquipedalian. 

As you might imagine, I agonized over what words to include in the basic list. To make the cut, a word had to satisfy one of three criteria. It had to be a word that 

1. business professionals, military officers, and educated people in general would be expected to know;

2. is fun to use, something to spice up the old vocabulary; or 

3. has a particularly interesting history or meaning. 

Squid Challenge 

To get things rolling, each chapter starts with some sort of challenge. Here's one for you to try as an example: 

Etmo

A fun way to experience and remember words is to learn a little bit about their origins and development. The study of word development is known as etymology (not to be confused with entomology—the study of insects). Let's trim the scary parts off and just call it etmo.

Squid Corner

What good is a martial art if it doesn’t teach you to defend yourself? In addition to the basic word list, I've included a series of articles on PUG.** One set of articles shows you how to defend yourself against puffed-up grammar bullies who perpetuate certain myths like 

• never end a sentence in a preposition,

• never split an infinitive,

• the best people say "an historic" and "an hypothesis." 

Other articles present tips for improving your communication skills, simplify a rule, or highlight something interesting from the world of words.

Buki Box

I'll suggest some buki for your box. Most of these will present some particularly puzzling point of PUG and show you how I handle it.

Field Trip 

After swallowing a healthy dose of my pontifications, I'll send you off to another web site for a chaser.

__________