TFY Chapter 2 (Word precision: how do i describe it?)

Chapter summary
1. An accurate use of words improves our thinking. They give forms to our thoughts so that we can make use of them. Words enable us to communicate with others and ourselves. Knowing the words for things and experiences helps us see and perceive more.
2. Writing helps us learn more about words and how to use them. Whem we struggle to select words that will describe our experience, we realize that words are only translations of experience and not experience itself
3. Clear thinking depends on a clear understanding of the words we use. Word confusion leads to less consciousness, or disequilibrium, which can only be restored through word clarification.
4. We need to understand what dictionaries can and cannnot offer us; we need to use them sillfully and frequently.
5. The thesaurus helps us when we are writing and translating nonverbal experiences and ideas into words; the dictionary haelps us when we are reading and interpreting the word of others.
6. Definitions set boundaries for word ideas and show us their specific and general characteristics and how they are related to or distinguished from one another.
7. Dictionary definitions show us the agreements that society has made about a word's meaning. But we may also compose our own personal or stipulative definitions of experiences or compose persuasive definitions to sway the opinions of others. In critical thinking it is important not to confuse these diffrent kinds of deifinitions, or to believe that personal, persuasive, or stipulative definitions carry the same agreements as those to be found in a dictionary.
8. The test of our understanding of a word is our ability to define it. This ability is particularly important for words representing key ideas that we wish to explain or defend. Taking the time to define the words we use is and essential preliminary to genuine communication.
9.A study of a word's etymology can help us trace a word back to its earliest root idea and can give us an image that conveys a more concrete sense of word's logic. Learning a word's etymology can also help us reconize its relationship to other words with the same root meanings.
10. The connotations of a word are its associative meanings, which can be positive, negative, or neutral. These associations can take the form of feelings, ideas, images, or thoughts. Thus, although politicians might rarely admit to lying or being confused, it is quite acceptable for them to admit they misspoke.
11.The first stage of critical reading is objective receptivity to the material; this means having the technical ability as well as the willingness to accurately reproduce its content without alterations or distortions. If we question and interact with material that we have not accurately interpreted, our criticisms will not be fair or worthwhile.