I would ask my mum what a word meant and she’d ask me the context I’d read/heard it in, and then ask me what I thought it meant. She taught me to break the word up into syllables to see if there were other words I did know the definition of that shared those syllables and whether I could work it out from there.
If I couldn’t then I had to look it up in the dictionary - we had a big, heavy Collins one from memory. Big blue hardback.
I remember being annoyed and just whining that she should just tell me the definition. But it was clearly better for me to learn that way.
Edit: I just re read and you said bad words. Mum would usually give me a clipped, child friendly definition and advice not to repeat it in polite company.
How did one look up bad words before the internet? Is “fuck” in the dictionary or like what?? Would librarians share such knowledge??
Genuine question who grew up with Google
I would ask my mum what a word meant and she’d ask me the context I’d read/heard it in, and then ask me what I thought it meant. She taught me to break the word up into syllables to see if there were other words I did know the definition of that shared those syllables and whether I could work it out from there.
If I couldn’t then I had to look it up in the dictionary - we had a big, heavy Collins one from memory. Big blue hardback.
I remember being annoyed and just whining that she should just tell me the definition. But it was clearly better for me to learn that way.
Edit: I just re read and you said bad words. Mum would usually give me a clipped, child friendly definition and advice not to repeat it in polite company.
Unabridged dictionary