Looking words up over and over and over.

Yes, I do it all the time. Mostly I use online dictionaries (m-w and onelook). The problem is I just can't remember things unless I use them a lot. I think condition is why I eventually took to math and programming - very little memorization, complicated things can be derived from much simpler things.

I play word games - scrabble, boggle, etc. I don't know how many times I've looked up 'cwm' and 'dite' and 'qat' - dozens for each. But I just can't seem to remember most of them. There's a large number of other words like that.

OTOH, while my functional vocabulary is probably a lot smaller than most of the people on this forum, it's still pretty large - and I actually use a lot of words - particularly when I write. But even with words I know and have known - or thought I knew - I've discovered that I was off in spelling or definition. Aside from typos and 'thinkos', for example, I spelt rapport as "repoire" once ... and a few other things. Just last week I gave my daughter in HS the wrong definition of a word when she tested me. (They like helping me study in this way.)

k