How do you extend your English vocabulary?

I read. A lot. Then I like to read. Oh, and I also read.
Not pulp, you understand. No romance novels with pink pulsing pearls of pleasure or throbbing manhhods. No Judith Krantz crap.
Literature; Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Hemmingway, Byron, Yeats, Pope, Tennyson, Coleridge, E R Burroughs, .......

You’re on the right track with reading Poe. Read everything that interests you in the slightest: classics, magazines, serialized fiction, newspapers, rags, websites, nonfiction, metafiction, plays, poems, pop-up books. If you come across a word you don’t know, look it up. Either keep close to a computer or purchase a Webster’s pocket dictionary (they’re cheap, reliable, and portable.) Sink your teeth into stories. Contemplate not merely the words they are using, but how they are using them. That’s the key to increasing your vocabulary. It’s not enough to know a word exists—you have to pick up on what it means and how to convey that meaning in the arch of the sentence.

Also, don’t be afraid to sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about. Keep trying to integrate the word into written or spoken dialogues.

Yep. I look up words all the time.

I have a word-of-the-day gadget on my Google homepage. I also read a ton (for school and for pleasure) and I love doing crossword puzzles.

Like @Seelix I get a ‘word of the day’ sent to my iPhone every morning. I then use that word at least 5 times each day. Works for me!!

You should try reading alot of articles and books. Reading is an excellent way of improving your vocabulary.Also you can try to skim through a dictionary once and awhile.

Reading is a great way to extend your vocabulary.
Another great way that obviously includes reading, is to get the Kindle. If you didn’t know already, the Kindle is an e-book where you can download and buy books from Amazon, RIGHT from the kindle. I add this as an option because there is a feature where if you ever come across a word that you don’t know, you move the arrow over to the word and the definition is given to you right there.

There is no better way than reading and looking up words. Poe is a great one for adding to your vocabulary. Trying to use a word in a sentence is an excellent practice. And you can check your sentences here with us if you like. (I’d suggest gathering up several at a time and putting them into one question.)

People say that I have an excellent vocabulary and command of the language, and in general I think that’s true. But this doesn’t mean I don’t have to look up words. I look up words all the time. I have five big dictionaries close by (I love dictionaries), and for quick reference I go to Dictionary.com. I check many words before I use them, just to make sure I’m clear about their precise meaning. And I like reading things written by people who know more words than I do (Michael Chabon comes to mind) because that stretches my vocabulary.

Another good way is to study another language, one that has a lot in common with English. Four great choices would be Latin, Greek, French, and German. You don’t have to know their grammar to get a benefit in vocabulary. Just studying a list of words and what they mean, with special attention to the roots, will help you with English.

One approach to roots is to look for words that have a core element in common; for example, words with port: porter, portal, transportation, import, export, portable, and so on. When you know that the port root is Latin for “to carry,” you can see a relationship among these words that illuminates their meaning. Not everything that looks related is really related, but just going by what you can see will teach you a lot. Notice that this is one reason why spelling is important. (Important: carrying weight, in the sense of having consequence or significance.)

You can also learn what the common prefixes and suffixes of English words mean (for example, per-, pro-, ex-, ad-, -fy, -logy, -phile, etc.). Many of them do come from Latin and Greek. If you know a lot of roots and a list of prefixes and suffixes, you can figure out a great many words that you haven’t learned directly.

Subscribe to Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day emails. They are really quite interesting.

My son-in-law is a walking dictionary! He used to scare me, at first, then I just began asking him to explain what in the world he was talking about!
Now, I’m becoming more familiar with words I never knew existed! I find that watching “Jeopardy” and “Cash Cab” broadens my vocabulary.

Just reading is not enough – you have to check up all the words you don’t know as you are reading. It seems tedious, and definitely is not pleasant when you are anxious to know the story, but it does wonders for your vocabulary.

As I read and come across words I am not familiar with, I look them up using a little app called WordWeb. It is free and sits on my laptop tool bar. If I am not near my laptop, I write the words down to check later.

I agree with the Prime Minister :-)

Reading really helps! If you don’t know the meaning of a word, look it up and try to commit the word to memory. Try using the words you learned in conversation or writing to get used to them :) Your vocabulary will increase naturally – you’re definitely on the right track by reading Poe! Smartfm is also a good website but I think you have to pay to use it now :/ Studying foreign languages has helped me a lot – I have come across words in French that I didn’t know the meaning of in English such as “nocivité”, “noxiousness” in English. It means “harmfulness”! Hope this helped!

Read – everything you can get your hands on – news magazines, books, etc. Listen, and pay attention.