Readers Digest - Reader s Digest Word Power is Brain Power

Readers Digest Word Power is Brain Power More Than 100 Quick Quizzes & Fun Facts A READERS DIGEST BOOK 2022 Trusted Media Brands, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, in any manner, is prohibited. Readers Digest is a registered trademark of Trusted Media Brands, Inc. Image Credits Cover illustrations: Owl CSA-Archive/Getty Images; Bookshelves Shanina/Getty Images Illustrations on : Monkey goodzone/Shutterstock; Cities Courtesy David Taylor; Hand Pretty Vectors/Shutterstock; Deer Panda Vector/Shutterstock; Giraffe WladD/Shutterstock; Buffalo Sloth Astronaut/Shutterstock All other illustrations: The Noun Project ISBN 978-1-62145-560-8 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-62145-561-5 (e-pub) We are committed to both the quality of our products and the service we provide to our customers. We value your comments, so please feel free to contact us.

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You might say it got off to a spurious start. Spurious was the very first stumper in the inaugural Word Power quiz, published in the January 1945 issue of Readers Digest. (Correct definition: false.) The column was the brainchild of author, publisher, and lifelong word nerd Wilfred J. Funkwhose father was the Funk of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias. Wilfred conjured nearly 5,000 words in 20 years of writing It Pays to Increase Your Word Power. (Enrichthats such a Word Power word.) As Peter Funk wrote in his introduction to the Word Power Quiz Book (a collection of Word Power challenges published in 2007): My many years as a lexical semanticist (a scholar who studies the meaning of words) have led me to adapt Wittgensteins observation to my own experience: The limits of the size and quality of our vocabulary form the limits of our minds. (Enrichthats such a Word Power word.) As Peter Funk wrote in his introduction to the Word Power Quiz Book (a collection of Word Power challenges published in 2007): My many years as a lexical semanticist (a scholar who studies the meaning of words) have led me to adapt Wittgensteins observation to my own experience: The limits of the size and quality of our vocabulary form the limits of our minds.

And I especially stress quality over sheer size.For example, concept words are quality words having to do with ideas. They stimulate us to think in new ways.Whenever we learn a new word, it is not just dumped into our mental dictionary. Our brain creates neuron connections between the new word and others relevant to our interest. It develops new perceptions and concepts. More recent research indicates that a large vocabulary may lead to a more resilient mind by fueling what scientists call cognitive reserve. One way to think about this reserve is as your brains ability to adapt to damage. Just as your blood cells will clot to cover a cut on your knee, cognitive reserve helps your brain cells find new mental pathways around areas damaged by stroke, dementia, and other forms of decay.

This could explain why, after death, many seemingly healthy elders turn out to harbor advanced signs of Alzheimers disease in their brains despite showing few signs in life. Its their cognitive reserve, researchers suspect, that may allow some seniors to seamlessly compensate for hidden brain damage. How does one build up cognitive reserve? Thats more good news for word lovers. Vocabulary is notoriously resistant to aging, and having a rich one, according to researchers from Spains University of Santiago de Compostela, can significantly delay the manifestation of mental decline. When the team analyzed vocabulary test scores of more than 300 volunteers ages 50 and older, they found that participants with the lowest scores were between three and four times more at risk of cognitive decay than participants with the highest scores. And the more you love learning about words, the more it will help.

You have to increase levels of the feel-good brain chemical dopamine in order to generate brain-cell growth, explains neuroscientist William Shankle, MD, medical director of the Pickup Family Neurosciences Institute of the Hoag Hospital Network in Newport Beach, California. Dont do things you dont like because theyre supposed to boost brainpower. Pick something you love. Keep learning about it and doing it. It takes passion to get benefits. Luckily, you wont find a funner way of improving your vocabulary than this all-new collection of Word Power quizzesand yes, funner is really a word! Theres a reason the column remains one of the most popular in the magazine, after all.

Along the way, youll also learn some enlightening tidbits about English grammar, such as the fact that one single word (at left), repeated eight times, can make a complete sentence. Whether you want to sound smarter in business meetings, ace that standardized test, or finally beat your brainy uncle in Scrabble, this book will help you increase your word power and your brain powerfor life. Today, more than 50 years later, I always check out It Pays to Enrich Your Word Power first when The Digest comes each month. I have learned that a word can work a small miracleif its the right word, in the right place, at the right time. Lee Iacocca (1924-2019), former chairman of Chrysler, who remembered vocabulary tests based on Word Power in ninth grade