Building Greek Vocabulary: the Defined Vocabulary List

One word, more than one shape

Here is the complaint every Greek learner makes: I learned that word, and I still did not recognise it in the passage. It is not a memory problem. It is a problem with what was learned. ⚠️ A GREEK WORD IS NOT ONE SHAPE. Learn γυνή as "woman" and you have learned one form of it. In an actual sentence you are far more likely to meet γυναῖκα or γυναικός, and neither of those looks much like what you learned. This is why your vocabulary list does not simply print a word and a meaning. Every entry gives you MORE than the headword: a second form for a noun, several for a verb. Those extra forms are not clutter and they are not there for completeness. They are the part that makes the word findable again. ⚠️ So the skill is not learning words. IT IS LEARNING ENTRIES. And there is one genuinely good piece of news. The Defined Vocabulary List is closed and published: OCR states exactly which words can appear. The work is finite, which is precisely what makes it worth doing properly rather than quickly.

How a vocabulary entry is built

Six terms for the pieces of an entry. What each part is, with no words attached yet.

Match each form to the word it comes from

What the extra forms in an entry tell you

Three kinds of entry, and what the parts beyond the headword are doing in each.

Learned it, and still missed it

A student has carefully learned that φέρω means "I carry". In the unseen passage they meet ἤνεγκον and cannot make anything of it, even though it is the same verb. What went wrong?

• They learned only the headword. ἤνεγκον is the aorist and is built on a completely different stem, which is precisely why the entry prints principal parts
• They are two unrelated verbs that happen to share a meaning
• ἤνεγκον is a noun, so it could not have been recognised from a verb entry
• Nothing went wrong; some words simply cannot be prepared for

How to work back to the headword

You will meet forms in a passage that are not the form you learned. That is normal, and there is a procedure for it rather than a knack. ⚠️ ONE: separate the ending from what is in front of it. The ending tells you the word's job in the sentence; what is in front of it tells you which word it is. You are hunting the second thing. TWO: ask whether the front part matches a stem you know. For most words it will, and you are done. THREE: if it does not, check for the awkward cases you were warned about. Was the stem hidden in the headword? Is this a verb whose aorist is built on something else entirely? ⚠️ These are the entries whose extra forms you were given for exactly this moment. FOUR: use the sentence. If a form must be the subject, you are looking for a nominative; if it follows a preposition, the case is already decided for you. Knowing what the form must BE narrows what the word can be. ⚠️ And a habit worth building now. When you learn an entry, say the whole entry aloud, not the headword and the meaning. The extra forms cost seconds to learn alongside and are useless learned afterwards. Because the list is closed, every word you will be asked about is one you could have prepared.

True about the Defined Vocabulary List

Select the TWO statements that are true.

• It is a closed, published list, so the vocabulary that can appear is known in advance
• Its entries give more than the headword, so that a word can be recognised in its other forms
• Words appear in passages only in the form given as the headword
• Any Greek word at all may appear in the Language paper

Build the vocabulary entry

Assemble a description of what a complete noun entry gives you, in the order the list prints it.

Why one word hides its own stem

Take the entry γυνή, γυναικός, ἡ, meaning a woman. Look at the headword on its own. γυνή. Four letters, and not one of them tells you that almost every other form of this word begins γυναικ-. Now look at the second form. γυναικός. ⚠️ There is the stem, in plain sight: γυναικ-, with a genitive ending on it. That is what the second form is for. With the stem in hand, the other forms stop being surprises. The accusative singular is γυναῖκα. The genitive is γυναικός. Neither of them would you have guessed from γυνή, and both of them fall straight out of the entry. Here it is doing its job in a real sentence: ὁ ἄνθρωπος τὴν γυναῖκα ὁρᾷ. The man sees the woman. ⚠️ A student who learned γυνή and stopped there meets γυναῖκα and has nothing to go on. A student who learned the entry recognises the stem immediately and can then use the ending to work out that she is the object rather than the subject. And notice which student did more work. ⚠️ Neither. The second one simply learned the right thing, in about the same time.

Order the cases of one noun

Four singular forms of ἄνθρωπος, a human being. Put them in the order the cases are conventionally listed: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative.

• `ἄνθρωπος` - the subject of the sentence
• `ἄνθρωπον` - the object of the verb
• `ἀνθρώπου` - of a human being
• `ἀνθρώπῳ` - to or for a human being

Complete the vocabulary entry facts

The form a word is listed under is its _____. For a noun, the list then prints the _____, which is given because it reveals the part of the word that stays put while the endings change. The definite article printed after those two shows the noun's _____. For a verb, the list prints a set of _____ instead, because its tenses are not all built on the same stem.

The vocabulary list run

Five questions on entries and on recognising forms. Three lives.

Spot the true facts about learning Greek words

Tap the TWO statements that are true.

• Learning the whole entry rather than the headword is what makes a word recognisable in a passage
• The genitive singular is printed for a noun because it reveals the stem
• A Greek word appears in only one form, so the headword is all that is needed
• The aorist of a verb can always be guessed from its present form

Three decisions about learning the list

Three pieces of student reasoning to judge. Each answer has to carry the explanation, not just the verdict.

• A student knows `γυνή` means a woman, meets `γυναικός` in a passage, and decides it must be a word they have never learned. What should they have done?
• A student is short of time and decides to learn only headwords and meanings, planning to pick the other forms up later. What is wrong with the plan?
• A student hears that the vocabulary list is closed and concludes there is little point preparing, since the passages are unseen anyway. How would you answer?

Explain how to learn a vocabulary entry

A classmate has learned two hundred headwords and their meanings, and still cannot read a passage. Write them the advice that explains why, and what to do instead.

• Explain why learning a headword and a meaning is not enough in Greek
• Say what a noun entry gives you beyond the headword, and what each extra part is for
• Say what a verb entry gives you instead, and why it is needed
• Describe what to do when you meet a form in a passage that you do not recognise
• Finish with why the list being closed makes careful preparation worth the effort