As you turn from the groups to the individuals, you must understand that your labors will be onerous and detailed.  You must not assume that by nature all words are much alike, any more than you assume that all men are much alike.  Of course the similarities are many and striking, and the fundamental fact is that a word is a word as a man is a man.  But you will be no adept in handling either the one or the other until your knowledge goes much farther than this.  Let us glance first at the human variations.  Each man has his own business, and conducts it in his own way—­a way never absolutely matched with that of any other mortal being.  All this you may see.  But besides the man’s visible employment, he may be connected in devious fashions with a score of enterprises the public knows nothing about.  Furthermore he leads a private life (again not precisely corresponding to that of any other), has his hobbies and aversions, is stamped with a character, a temperament of his own.  In short, though in thousands of respects he is like his fellows, he has after all no human counterpart; he is a distinct, individual self.  To know him, to use him, to count upon his service in whatsoever contingency it might bestead you, you must deem him something more than a member of the great human family.  You must cultivate him personally, cultivate him without weariness or stint, and undergo inconvenience in so doing.

Even so with a word.  Commonplace enough it may seem.  But it has its peculiar characteristics, its activities undisclosed except to the curious, its subtle inclinations, its repugnances, its latent potentialities.  There is no precise duplicate for it in all the wide domain of language.  To know it intimately and thoroughly, to be on entirely free terms with it, to depend upon it just so far as dependence is safe, to have a sure understanding of what it can do and what it cannot, you must arduously cultivate it.  Words, like people, yield themselves to the worthy.  They hunger for friendship—­and lack the last barrier of reserve which hedges all human communion.  Thus, linguistically speaking, you must search out the individuals.  You must step aside from your way for the sake of a new acquaintance; in conversations, in sermons, in addresses, in letters, in journalistic columns, in standard literature you must grasp the stranger by the hand and look him straight in the eye.  Nor must you treat cavalierly the words you know already.  You must study them afresh; you must learn them over and learn them better; you must come to understand them, not only for what they are, but for what they will do.

What Words to Learn First