There are various strategies that you can learn which will help you to deduce what a word likely means. Yes, you could just look them up in a dictionary; but, studies show that you most likely won't remember the word after a while. However, by making your brain figure it out, a trail of understanding is left and you are more likely to remember it, thus improving your vocabulary! Perhaps you are taking a standardized test and are being asked about particular words. These strategies will help you immensely!
Step 1. Context - If the word is used in a sentence, look at the other words and see if they give you clues to the word's meaning. This may help to guess, at least, part of the word's meaning.
Step 2. STRUCTURE- Probably the most important skill when it comes to understanding words. The internal structure of words is called morphology. Morphology consists of morphemes--which are minimal units of meaning, rules for combining them into words, and rules for pronouncing the resulting words.
Step 3. Using your understanding of morphology helps you break down a word into smaller pieces so that you can guess what it means.
Step 4. MORPHEME- A morpheme may be a word or less than a word. Morphemes cannot be broken down into smaller units. TYPES OF MORPHEMES- Prefixes, Suffixes, Infixes, Plurals, Possessives, and base(root) words.
Step 5. Now that you understand what a morpheme is, the next step is to take your word and try to break it down into morphemes.
Step 6. KNOW YOUR ROOTS - Sometimes after you break down your word, you still may not know the meaning because you don't know what the base (root) word means. Think of other words you know that have the same base in them.
Step 7. With the strategies above you can usually guess what a word means. If you are taking a test, use what you've assumed about the word to help with the process of elimination.