If you stop and think about the words you use every day, and what they really mean, you may be inclined not to use certain words. How do you go about changing the words you use? The short answer is that you have to expand your vocabulary. How exactly do you do that? Try word games such as "search words" on for size.

Word Games

You can find books and magazines in most supermarkets that contain word games of one kind or another. A lot of people use word games like these to kill time, like when they're stuck on a long aircraft flight. I'll bet my wife will be doing some on her Philippine Airlines flight of over 15 hours in November.

I think any English-speaking person should spend a minimum of an hour a day playing some form of word game. It doesn't matter if you use a book and play one with yourself or if you play word games with other people. The point is to just do it.

Things like free jigsaw puzzles may be fun to play and kill a lot of time, but they'll do nothing to help you expand your word knowledge and vocabulary.

Search Words

There are thousands of puzzle books (more appropriately classified as magazines or workbooks) that have you search for words from a given word list and in certain patterns. The more complex the patterns and the more words with terminology you're not familiar with, the better the search word puzzle books are.

Search words will teach you to recognize word patterns that you may have never seen before. While they won't necessarily improve your vocabulary, they'll make you more receptive to improving your vocabulary.

Sudoku games are similar in nature, but they deal with number sequences, not the letter sequences and words are normally letter sequences (they do sometimes contain numbers and it's important to be good at number recall as well).

Words We Use Every Day

Every now and then, I like to inject a little humor in a subject as boring as this one.

Let's take the word "handkerchief", for example. It's a square piece of cloth originally designed for one purpose: To blow your nose. People used to keep at least one tucked into their clothing somewhere at all times. With the advent of tissue paper, it's no longer a common practice. Nowadays, the only common place you'll see them is when they're folded and put into Tuxedo and other suit pockets.

My father used to keep a cloth handkerchief with him for its original purpose, up until the day he died, although he didn't call it that. He called it a "snot rag". I tried, over the years, to break him of that habit but he kept telling me he didn't like to use tissue to "clean his boogers away".

Handkerchiefs go by other names, depending on word usage. You may not have heard of just "kerchief", but I'm sure you've heard of a "bandana" before. A bandana is really nothing more than a colorful handkerchief wrapped around the head. Hopefully, the wearer doesn't use it as a "snot rag" as well as a head covering.

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