How do you know the meaning of the word before seeing dictionary?

Answer 1

The "dictionary debate" is one raised by students every school year; how do I know spelling or meaning if I don't know its spelling or meaning before using a dictionary?

Word meanings are often "context dependent", meaning, the sentences around a word helps us to know or to guess the approximate meaning of the word. For example, we know that people perceive temperature as hot or cold. If you saw a sentence, "He was hot", all by itself, you might think the word "hot" meant the slang version of "attractive". But, the context changes when the sentence is within a paragraph:

John sat in his car along Route 66 in the middle of the desert. A broken radiator was the culprit. His old jalopy had hissed, spit, and spewed its scalding liquid all over the engine until it ran down the front of the grill. The last gas station was ten miles back, too far to travel during the daytime. He was hot. Worse, he had no water and was beginning to feel dehydrated.

Even with more difficult words, think about the meaning in context of what you are reading. Look for clues in surrounding sentences.