Most freshman composition textbooks are inadequate in giving information to students on how to interpret dictionaries: instead of presenting them as aids in exploring word usage, textbooks foster a naive trust in dictionaries as arbiters of all usage questions. Rather than treating words as discrete items to be mastered without knowledge of underlying word relationships, vocabulary lessons in freshman textbooks need to investigate (1) differences among dictionaries, (2) derivational morphology--how roots and affixes combine to produce meaning, (3) semantic differentiation, (4) denotation and connotation of various affixes, (5) similarities of word roots, (6) word etymology, and (7) new word generation through compounding. Students above the basic writing level should have a clearer picture of how words develop and of how they change in acceptability, form, meaning, and use. (MM)