VOWEL DUMPS Short (1 of 4)

NOTE: This post relates to the “VOWEL DUMPS Short” (Beg. 1.5) word list or note sheet (see the Word List page).

The word lists I’ve posted are include inner and outer hooks, def­i­n­i­tions and a col­umn for notes (I refer to these lists as Note Sheets). These sheets are designed to facili­ti­ate famil­iar­iza­tion.  Keep in mind that the real test of whether or not a word has been learned is whether or not you can pick it out of a rack of let­ters (i.e. can you ana­gram it?). More on that later.

Right now the task at hand to become “famil­iar” with the 89 “short” vowel dumps on the VOWEL DUMP Short list, so here goes.

Five two-letter vowel only words (AA, AE, AI, OE, OI). No prob­lem here (there were on an ear­lier word list). Just in case:

AA rough, cin­dery lava [n –S]
AE one [adj]
AI a three-toed sloth [n –S]
OE a whirl­wind off the Faeroe islands [n –S]
OI oy (used to express dis­may or pain) [interj]

Although that’s a good review, even bet­ter are the hook lists (b/hls for AA, for exam­ple). The hook list for AE is inter­est­ing – it’s almost entirely com­prised of what I call “alt” spelling words, or words that have famil­iar def­i­n­i­tions, but are spelled irreg­u­larly. For AE, this words are:

GAE to go (to move along) [v GAED, GANE or GAEN, GAEING or GAUN, GAES]
HAE to have (to be in pos­ses­sion of) [v HAED, HAEN, HAEING, HAES]
KAE a bird resem­bling a crow [n –S]
MAE more (a greater amount) [n –S]
NAE no; not [adv]
SAE so [adv]
TAE to (in the direc­tion of) [prep]
WAE woe (tremen­dous grief) [n –S]

The only excep­tion is KAE. Notice all the forms of GAE (or go) – these can be use­ful. Other inter­est­ing hooks off the twos on this list include the following:

AAL an East Indian shrub [n –S]
AIN ayin (a Hebrew let­ter) [n –S]
AIT a small island [n –S]
JOE a fel­low [n –S]
KOI a large and col­or­ful fish [n –S]
RAI a style of pop­u­lar Algerian music [n –S]
VOE a small bay, creek, or inlet [n –S]

That about does it for the first 5 two-letter vowel dumps.

The next few words (from AEON down through ALOE) have a few inter­est­ing hooks:

PAEON a met­ri­cal foot of four syl­la­bles [n –S]
RAGEE ragi (an East Indian cereal grass) [n –S]
RAKEE raki (a Turkish liqueur) [n –S]

EON is a fami­lar word, you just have to remem­ber that you can put an A in front of it. If you add a P, you get PAEON, which is very close to PAEAN (a song of joy [n –S]).

There are some mem­o­riza­tion tech­niques that can be illus­trated using these words. Memorization is about con­nec­tions and con­nec­tions can be made in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways. Think of the process of mem­o­riza­tion as a process of link­ing a new node into an exist­ing net­work – the more con­nec­tions you can make, the more likely it is you’ll be able to pick it out of a rack when you need to. AEON can tied to EON in one direc­tion and PAEON in the other. AJEE and AGEE are dif­fer­ent spellings of the same word. AERO is an impor­tant “clus­ter” pre­fix and shows up in more than 100 accept­able Scrabble plays (here’s a quick list of all “aero” words gen­er­ated using Zyzzyva: http://​old​town​scrab​ble​.com/​1​8​/​0​6​/​a​e​r​o​-​w​o​r​ds/). AUGE can be remem­bered by link­ing it to VAGUE, and RAGEE and RAKEE both fol­low the same pat­tern (with ee being replaced by the more com­mon i).  ALOE is a fairly straight­for­ward word, but your friends will be impressed if you play ALOETIC.

To Be CONTINUED (we made it down to word 17 on the list).

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