Stephen Carlson wrote:Surely, the best guide to meaning is usage.
The question is whose usage? The authour's existing texts preserved from antiquity, or the reader's own ability to use the language.
In fact, I get what you are saying, and two months ago, I would have agreed with you. Now, however, the rhythm of the "usage" mantra sounds muffled and distant.
The works that I've been reading on vocabulary acqisition say that mastering vocabulary means having a mastery of the vocabulary. In learning-teaching (at the level when this word would learnt that basically means facilitating the students own natural acquisition) of vocabulary, exercises are often used to develop mastery of vocabulary, even when the ultimate aim is only passive understanding.
Stephen Carlson wrote:To get a feel for this word, isn't it best to read this and related words in context ...
"Context" ultimately means "educated guessing". Experienced readers make better guesses. Context educates our guesses. Many contexts for the same meaning are beneficial, too.
It has been suggested that about 6 contexts for each meanings of a polysemic wohird are adequate to teach and consolidate a lexical item. That poses problems of adequacy of contexts for most of the New Testament lexical stock - and broadly for Classical Greek as a whole. Even words that occur six times or more may be being used in the same context - collocated with the same words, or even in the same set phrases over and over again.
Another thing that educates our guessing is our understanding of morphology. The better we understand grammar, the better we are at guessing. Not only the grammar that we use for parsing, but also the grammar that allows us to form and predict the various parts of speech associated with a word. Like CCW says, that is the point if my question, invitation to discussion.
If we accept that it is possible to teach words directly, some concept questions we might ask after explaining the meaning are:
Have the listeners heard these thing before?
Ουχ οι ακροατές ήδη ήκουσαν τα ρήματα αυτά; (Μάλιστα)
Has the author reminded them before?
Ουχ ο συγγραφεύς αυτός ανεμιίμνισκεν αυτούς;
Is he reminding them of something he thinks they should already know and not need continuous reminding of?
Those are sort of leading questions.
After asking them, the learners could go a writing, and/or speaking exercise if they have someone to speak with. After that, they may have some mastery of the usage.