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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7109
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The best way to expand your vocabulary is to read a lot of books with unfamiliar words in them, experiencing them in context. However, there are ways to make this easier:

- Seeking out relatively modern authors who have a reputation for using their rich vocabularies well in-context will make these words' meanings at least somewhat plain. (Gene Wolfe is my favorite writer along these lines.) 
- Reading older books with unfamiliar words will give you a larger number of new words to learn, but more words to look up. Reading these books on an e-reader will help, where looking up a word isn't much more complicated than tapping it on the screen. 
- Read annotated versions of older books. These will have explanations of concepts and words unfamiliar to a modern audience. 

Lastly, you can move outside of reading books and go to reference sources directly:

- Browsing dictionaries and thesauri can be a heady if addictive pastime. I don't recommend this to any but the most ardent reference junkies. (Ahem.) 
- There are books _about_ compiling reference books that may be more digestible. For example, [Reading the OED](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0399535055) is a reader's journal of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary. 
- Word-a-day calendars can be fun. Similarly, the [Dictionary.com](https://twitter.com/dictionarycom) and the [Merriam-Webster](https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster) Twitter feeds perform similar functions. 

Original score: 4