Competition, Overcome, Achieve | Vocabulary

0:00- [David] Wordsmiths, welcome to the 29th Annual Wordsmith Challenge. In this action-packed competition, readers face off in 40 different events. Can they achieve their goals, and can they overcome the dreaded hyper spelling challenge where you have to spell four words at the same time?

0:19Guess we'll have to see. We're highlighting three words in this section. Competition, overcome, achieve. And then I'll go through each word and what it means, and then we'll use each of those words in an example sentence. Competition, competition. It's noun. It means a contest or game to see who is the best at something.

0:43Competition has that T-I-O-N ending, that suffix, which turns verbs into nouns. It turns action words into things. So I can compete in the Wordsmith Challenge, and the Wordsmith Challenge is a competition. People compete for the title of Wondrous Wordsmith. Overcome, overcome. It's a verb.

1:05It means to be successful despite facing difficulties. Very literal word origin, here. There's a big hill? Oh, what a difficulty. Hup, hup, hup, hup, hup. Now I've come over it. The difficult part is over. You can overcome challenges, fears, suspicions. A great word, a very useful word.

1:24Finally, achieve, achieve. Another verb. It means to do something successfully through skill or hard work. You'll also see achievement, the noun form, which means something someone has done successfully through skill or hard work, right? We talk about achievements when we talk about goals.

1:42Classic video game language, too. Achievement unlocked. You've performed something successfully and gotten a little badge for it. Also meant, M-E-N-T. This suffix is another suffix that turns verbs into nouns, like tion, like T-I-O-N. Movement, shipment, the moving of a thing, the shipping of a thing.

2:04So achievement is the achieving of a thing. Let's look at some example sentences. "The Lumberjack World Championship is a yearly competition in which athletes chop wood, saw logs, and climb up trees as fast as they can." So these lumberjacks, and lumberjanes, and lumberjordans are all competing in this contest to see who is the best at chopping wood, sawing logs, and speed climbing trees.

2:29They're competing in a competition. Next one, "I overcame my fear, and sledded down Breakneck Hill, the steepest hill in town." The thing preventing me from sledding down Breakneck Hill was my fear, but I overcame it. I successfully sledded despite facing difficulties.

2:48Fear was the thing I had to overcome. Last one, "When we got off the ferry in Ketchikan, Alaska, I cheered. I had achieved my goal of visiting every US state." I did it through skill or hard work, and I did it. I achieved, I completed, I successfully finished my goal.

3:07And let me tell you, it is very difficult to get to Ketchikan, Alaska from the mainland. You can take a ferry from Bellingham, Washington or cross the border into Canada and leave from Vancouver, British Columbia, and it takes, like, 44 hours. So getting there is quite an achievement.

3:23And those are the words for this round of definitions. The Wordsmith Challenge continues right after this lesson. Until then, you can learn anything. David out.