Have you ever been reading something (a book, magazine, blog. . . whatever; it isn't important) and encountered a word you didn't know? What do you do with it? Use the context to gather a ballpark meaning and continue on? Pull out a dictionary of some sort? Google/Wikipedia it?
Or do you ignore it and move on?
I'm usually pretty faithful about looking up words that i don't know the immediate meaning of. A ballpark definition isn't generally specific enough, in case i like the word and want to use it later.
Reading stuff on my Kindle, i discovered, has made me a bit lazy. There is a built-in dictionary in it, and all i have to do is highlight the line with the word in question on it, and it returns to me the definition of every major word on the line. Too much information? Maybe. But i kinda like it.
Recently, i was forced to put my Kindle down and read an actual, honest-to-grapes paperback book. It was an absolutely miserable experience! I was tethered to my desk while reading at home so i could have access to Merriam-Webster.com. Reading out? I had to try and remember words i wanted to look up. About halfway through the book, i surrendered looking things up altogether just to get through the damn thing. For the first time in my life, i got a glimpse into the life of someone who hates to read, though i'm sure the reading-hater wouldn't cite the lack of a good, ready dictionary as their primary reason. The result of this surrender: i misused a word and was called out on it.
Probably not the worst thing a person could do, but i was pretty mortified, seeing as how one of my pet peeves is when people bandy words about without knowing what the hell they mean. It just makes you look stupid (or, in my case, lazy).
Anyway, to get to my point, i have to say that i really hate actual paper books. I wish everything was published digitally.
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