721. Collins Dictionary Word Quizzes / Confusing Words with Fred Eyangoh

This is the second part of my recent conversation with Fred Eyangoh about learning new vocabulary. This one includes a word quiz with homophones and commonly confused words from the Collins Dictionary website.

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Introduction Transcript

Hello listeners, how are you doing today? I trust that all is well in podcastland.

This is the second part of a double episode about learning vocabulary with one of my friends Fred Eyangoh. 

In the last episode you heard about how Fred has been using a spelling game to discover new words, and this led to a discussion about what to do when you come across new bits of vocabulary, including how using online dictionaries can be a really good way to expand your knowledge of words, and also about how just staying curious about new words is very beneficial, and how learning one word leads you to another word and before you know it your vocabulary has expanded exponentially. It certainly works for Fred, whose vocabulary is really strong.

And at the end of the last episode, Fred and I were on the Collins Dictionary website and we were about to do one of the word quizzes that you can find there. The one we chose was about easily confused words. Words that sound the same but are in fact different.

So that’s what happening in this episode. Listen to Fred and me doing a quiz about some homophones – words which have different spelling, different meanings and yet the same pronunciation. So there’s vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling to learn here as we go through various words, but also there are the usual tangents, little jokes and things like that. I hope you learn some things from it and that you have fun while listening.

I will recap the various bits of vocabulary you’ll hear on the other side of this conversation, and it’s a list of at least 30 vocabulary items. I’ll go through that list at the end of the episode to make sure you’ve got it. You’ll see the word list on the page for this episode on my website.

But now, I will let you rejoin my chat with Fred about learning vocabulary, using online dictionaries and a word quiz about homophones.


Click here for Collins Dictionary word quizzes https://www.collinsdictionary.com/quiz/en


Ending Transcript & Vocabulary List

OK so that was Fred and me doing a word quiz about easily confused words on the Collins Dictionary website.

I certainly hope you found that useful, and perhaps you could consider checking out those word quizzes as well on the Collins Dictionary website – again, they don’t sponsor this podcast, but maybe they should. I’ve even got the perfect line for the advert, “Are you confused about which word to use? Just think, ‘What would Colin say?’ and go to collinsdictionary.com”

It’s not actually Colin’s dictionary by the way, a dictionary owned by a man named Colin. “Hello, I’m Colin. This is my dictionary. It’s got lots of words in it.” No, I think that Collins is a surname (double L), like Phil Collins. In fact, the name comes from William Collins, an industrialist from Glasgow who set up a printing press in the 1820s, and in the early 1840s he started printing illustrated dictionaries, and the rest, as they say, is history. The publishing company is now known as HarperCollins, and in fact they are based in Hammersmith in the W6 postcode of London, which is where I was living when I first started my podcast. That’s why there’s a W6 on my logo by the way. It’s because that’s my London postcode. 

So, wow! That’s interesting isn’t it!? In any case, you can find more of those word quizzes and things at www.collinsdictionary.com 

Vocabulary Re-cap

Right, so just like the previous episode about the New York Times spelling bee, there are a few words that I feel I should re-cap at the end here. 

Let me just quickly go through some of those words again, just to make sure you got them.

Words

  • A miner
  • To mine
  • A coal miner
  • A minor (person)
  • Minor key
  • Major key
  • Bleak
  • Evocative – “The minor key is so much more evocative”
  • Seller / Buyer
  • Cellar  (a room below the house for storage)
  • Basement (an underground floor which could be furnished – more common in US English)
  • Attic
  • Loft
  • Steaks
  • Stakes
  • The stakes are high
  • That terrible joke:
A man walks into a butcher’s shop and inquires of the butcher: “Are you a gambling man?” The butcher says yes, so the man says: “I bet you £50 that you can’t reach up and touch that meat hanging on the hooks up there.” The butcher says “I’m not betting on that”, “But I thought you were a gambling man” the man retorts. “Yes I am” says the butcher “but the steaks are too high!”.
  • Bridal
  • Bridle
  • Baby shower
  • Hen do
  • Hen party
  • Bachelorette party
  • Bridal shower
  • Mussels
  • Muscles
  • Molluscs
  • Shellfish (molluscs and crustaceans that we eat)
  • Seafood (food that includes fish, octopus, squid, crab, lobster, shellfish etc)
  • Moolah (a slang word meaning cash)
  • Herbs
  • Thyme / Time

You also heard us talking briefly about Wandavision at the end there. Wandavision is a new-ish TV series by Marvel Studios. We also mentioned The Madalorian, which is a Star Wars TV series. I really must talk about all this new pop culture at some point on the podcast. There’s new Star Wars TV stuff, Marvel TV stuff (like Falcon & The Winter Soldier which I’ve also been watching) and even Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but it’s all going to have to wait I’m afraid. There are so many things to talk about and do on this podcast but there are only so many hours in the day. Also, I have quite a big backlog of episodes in the pipeline at the moment, so I’ll have to publish all of those before I can think about new stuff.

New episodes arriving soon…