[Knowing]

I'm curious if anyone here as any advice on how to build one's internal vocabulary. At the age of 21 I certainly don't expect to know every word out there but I'm certainly open to techniques or even resources like books that help develop someone's vocabulary rather than writing down and reaching for a dictionary every dozen pages when reading through work like Erikson's. After all not only is that tedious and frustrating when reading, it also seems to be lacking efficiency. So, does anyone here recommend specific reference books or techniques? Is it best to study root-words or stick with learning entire specific words?

[Ribald]

Well I am most certainly not an expert on this sort of thing but from personal experience I know that understanding the etymology of words and the various roots of language can be exceptionally useful when you encounter new terms. So some introductory Latin, Greek and German can be very useful.

That observation aside, I can only recommend that you read broadly and widely. The greater your experience with a language, the more likely you are to build a strong base for you vocabulary. The best remedy I have found is to read, read and read some more. Particularly if you read from well known works of literature from Shakespeare to the modern day. Sampling poetry, including the epics, as well as plays and prose of all kinds is a surefire way of building a good base vocabulary.

Alternatively you could wait for the technology of The Matrix to exist and then just download the entire Oxford English Dictionary into your brain.

[Use Of Weapons]

Also: subscribe to the weekly newsletter from this site: www.worldwidewords.org. It's primarily concerned with etymology and odd linguistic phenomena, and every week it has a "Weird word" section, which showcases a word that's either obscure due to being rare or obsolete, or one that might have been recently in the news. For example, the last few weeks' weird words have been 'nye', 'harum-scarum' and 'comeuppance'.