Rendezvous with Words

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Md. Mohin Uddin Mizan , Sep 13, 2015

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"Change the line of learning vocabulary; strengthen your word-muscle By: Md. Mohin Uddin Mizan The most common question we frequently come across while offering lecture to the IBA (BBA or MBA), GRE, GMAT and BCS candidates is- “Sir, how can we remember the vocabulary?” It is actually very usual that you commit to memory the words and soon forget them. In this respect, some words are quickly digested and leave your cerebrum, and the rest stay just to accommodate the upcoming ingredients you are going to receive afterwards. And so, our common reply to our beloved students is that you should make flash cards of the words you forget, record the words to listen to them with headphones during leisure, go through newspaper daily, etc. Now, I would like to come up with the newest and most effective and recreational ways to master the English lexemes for the GRE/IBA/GMAT/BCS/IBA applicants. “Rendezvous with Words” by Sarwar Morshed and Mahamuda Akter. Sarwar Morshed (the principal writer), Associate Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Chittagong, has been writing both in English and vernacular for over the last two decades. Apart from his academic research writings, he contributes column to national Dailies (Bangladesh) and Magazine published from London, Oslo (Norway). Except for this book he penned some other amazing books like Husam Uddiner Election Khela (2009), In the Castle of my Mind (2015), etc. Rendezvous with Words is a book of an accumulation of words from different spheres of life with their origin, formation, etc. It is, in many ways, different from the existing piles of books on vocabulary available in the market. This book is designed in such a way that cannot help learners memorising the English lexis, their meanings and usages; in fact, the word formations with their suffix, prefix, eponyms, toponyms, neologism make them lend a hand to retain them in their brains. Let’s take some instances: the authors have intellectually categorized the lexis related to the shapes and resemblance, killing and killers, mania, phobia, disease, etc. i.e. the words ended with ‘form’ refer to geometrical description, animal form, shapes of obscure objects, words ended with ‘mania’ indicates an extremely strong desire or enthusiasm for something often shared by a lot of people at the same time, the expressions that use the suffix –‘loquent’,-‘loquence’ or ‘loquy’ from Latin ‘loqui’(to speak) refer to manners or styles of speaking, and the terms ended with the suffix ‘itis’ refer to disease associated with inflammation or burning sensation. Above all, it discusses the words related to science, medicine, sports, love and attraction, colours, rhetorical devices, professions and animals in such a scientific way that the learners can easily learn them by heart. The book has started making the readers somewhat startled, offering them a linguistic shock: contranyms. Contranyms are the words that can mean the opposite of themselves, for example, the word citation means award for good behaviour and at the same time penalty for bad behaviour, the term oversight refers to watchful control or something not noticed. How amazing! Do you know the adjective form of the nouns fish or butterfly or spring? ‘No’, I think. In this book learners are going get such an astounding form of words, but obviously they are not obscure rather commonly used in our everyday life. Besides the new surprising terms are portmanteau words, toponyms, eponyms etc. Toponyms are the words derived from the place names as the word Lesbian from Lesbos island of Greece, Spa from a town of Belgium, Hambuger from Humburg of Germany. In the same line, the words derived from proper names are called Eponyms. Eponyms are omnipresent in English such as the fast food item ‘sandwich’ came from the name of the Earl of Sandwich, the verb ‘boycott’ from the name of Mr. Boycott, etc. Dr. Condom, the personal physician of Charles II of England from whose name was derived the almost unutterable six-letter word referring to the male contraceptive, condom. Readers will never be bored while reading the books, as keeping in mind the psychology of the learners the recreational aspect of exploring the ‘lexidom’ has been ignored over here. Most of the units in this book have tripartite structure- discussion, several examples, and practices. To the authors, it is deliberately done to ‘engage’ the readers, to ‘activate’ their interests and to make them ‘explore’. A point to be noted here is that Rendezvous with Words is not a book for complete lexical preparation for GRE/GMAT/SAT exams, but this book must help to shape or structure vocabulary knowledge and remember them in a categorized and scientific way. This book will come in handy to the word-enthusiasts, BCS examinees as well as the students of English Language and Literature. Rendezvous with Words is sardine-packed with diverse topics that you can use to liven up your discussion talk, divided into topical units with fun chapters like Marsupial Lexemes, super-saturated with exercises formulated specially for advanced learners to explore test-worthy words, inflate vocabulary, trigger lexical obesity, super-charge word-power and above all strengthen word-muscle. Md. Mohin Uddin Mizan, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Chittagong"