What do you think of when I use the word crib? Did you think a baby’s bed or a place to live in urban slang? Standing alone it’s hard to determine. The words that lead up to and are after in a sentence make it possible for you to grasp the meaning for crib. What do you think of when I say stroke?
That’s the power of language. Words, put together, make communication possible. It’s the essence of how people interact, whether spoken or written.
An Example – Game Shows
Game shows use this as the basis of how they work. Think of the show the $25,000 Pyramid. One teammate tries to get the other to say a word by describing that word. This is the same idea as speaking a word without context except in reverse. What makes it difficult is words can have more than one definition and not every person knows the same definition. This involves the teammate giving different meanings as clues to help their partner guess the right word.
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