Building a Better Vocabulary

captious

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adjective

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crabby, cross, testy

carping, acrimonious, cantankerous

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Hypercritical aunt or uncle

Busybody at work

English professor

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complimentary, encouraging

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speech, along with any connections you might make with the

target word. In our example, captious is an adjective that means

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of captious might lead you to think of capture, and it might be

helpful to remember that you would never want to be captured by a

captious person.

z The top-right quadrant is used to record synonyms, including both

words you know well—to anchor your knowledge of the new

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in a thesaurus.

z In the bottom-left quadrant, record personal examples of the word.

In this case, you might identify people you know who are captious,

such as a relative or your boss.

z Finally, in the bottom-right quadrant, record non-examples and

antonyms of the word. Often, when you’re trying to learn what a

concept is, it’s helpful to know what it’s not.