Vocab Lesson

As young children we learn thousands of words. A 12-year-old can have a vocabulary of around 50,000 words!

We build communities with our words.

But somewhere along the line we stop learning new words. We stop asking "what does that mean?" We decide to is context clues instead of looking something up in the dictionary.

I learned a new word on Sunday. "Eleemosynary".

It means to rely on charity, generally applied to an organization. An eleemosynary school, for example.

I share all of this because I recently thought of another time I learned a new word. I was 13 and playing a trivia game with my dad at church.

The question was "How long do elephants gestate?".

I had no idea what gestate meant. So I asked my dad and he told me.

A simple question taught me that elephants are pregnant for 2 years!

A simple question reminds me as an adult that if an elephant can get through a pregnancy, I can too.

When's the last time you learned a new word?