How To Prepare Word of The Day At the Last Minute

As a Toastmaster, you often get a last minute request to take up the grammarian role.

Whilst everything else required for the role is doable, the word of the day sometimes makes me nervous. I have maintained a diary and app and done everything under the Sun to have something handy, but then, in the last minute rush, its either too much information that makes it a problem or too little.

You can always use the dictionary also, but then it’s not just sharing a new word and it’s meaning. It’s much more than that, you have to be able to make the audience register it and make it a part of their vocabulary.

For that, it must come with an example usage, origin, picture and a story or some other memory technique so that it sticks in the audiences mind forever.

Here’s one resource I love for that: link

You could easily find, see a ~1 minute video and even use it as it while you’re on stage.

For the memory tips to include while sharing the word of the day, refer to this blog, but I can certainly give you another example here for a new word which I recently learnt:

Squalor – meaning: Dirty and unpleasant circumstances especially due to poverty.

My students often ask me how to make good sentences while using a word in a sentence, and I tell them to create sentences so that the meaning of the word comes out from the sentence.

For instance:

• He lived in squalor. [Not a good sentence – No idea what squalor means]
• Living in squalor in early childhood did not stop Oprah Winfrey in becoming a successful African American TV anchor. [Better – somewhat clear it means something unfair, but still not fully clear]
• The prisoner’s leg infection was made worse by the squalor of the unsanitary prison. [Best – Clear it means unpleasant and dirty conditions due to unsanitary prison]

Now why I’m telling this here is because this is somewhat similar to the memory aid technique also. Here it goes:

Memory technique:

• Squalor sounds like Scholar, right?
• And stories stick, right?

So, we create a story to remember this word forever. Here it is:

There are universities that offer scholarship particularly to those living in dirty and unpleasant conditions of poverty.

So, next time you read or hear the word, squalor, your mind recalls scholar, and then it goes to this story which gives you it’s meaning.

Hope you’re with me. If you have any suggestions or feedback, will be happy to hear from you.

Until next time, Mohit saying Ciao.