3 ms·

I admit to not understanding why people assume meanings rather than look them up.

• tremon 3y ago
  So... you're nonplussed about why people would pick up new words from casual usage rather than from books?
• da_chicken 3y ago
  The context in which a word is used is typically more informative than the meaning in the dictionary. For example, "set" has an unreasonably large number of definitions [0] but I can't remember the last time its usage in a sentence was confusing. It's also why "cromulent" from The Simpsons had a clear meaning during the episode that coined the word even though it did not exist prior to the episode airing. [0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/set https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/set
• cryptonector 3y ago
  That's how we learn 95% of words' meanings: by osmosis from hearing them used by others whom we presume know their proper meanings. I doubt you've done 100,000 dictionary look-ups, or any number remotely in the ballpark of the number of English words you know.
• bazoom42 3y ago
  How did you learn your first language? Most people learn to speak before they learn to read and use a dictionary.