I'm hunting for non-dull, even enjoyable ways to teach vocabulary--ways that actually go some way toward ensuring that what's learned is actually retained (i.e., really learned). Suggestions are welcome; things that work for working teachers are particularly welcome.

Reading the dictionary?
I guess it takes a certain kind to enjoy that.
Reading in general?

While I do retain knowledge from memorization drills, I think most students need to put the words to practical use in what they read and in their own writing. I am not sure what to suggest then other than challenging literature and essays where a student might be encouraged to use new vocabulary terms.

I'd suggest the poetry route: give 10 words a week, force them to write them in a poem (or short story or journal entry or whatever). I've experienced it (in elementary school), and it seemed to work for the rest of the class too. Sometimes we were given tasks (sonnets, limericks (but we weren't required to use multiple vocab words per limerick, too hard), other forms I can't think of offhand), sometimes it was just "write something short".

Here is an activity I remember from high school: in one of my English classes, we were given standard vocab tests every week or so and also encouraged to do silent reading with books of our own choosing when other assignments were completed. There is nothing new about those parts, but if we found any of our vocabulary words in our silent reading books, and wrote down the complete sentence from the book, we would get one point of extra credit if 10 such sentences were accumulated and double-checked by the teacher. This kept me on the lookout for the new words. I think context does more for learning new words than merely rote memorization of definitions.

Does your school have an OED handy? Rather than teach vocabulary widely, I'd press my students to go into a few words deeply: connections, etymologies, quotations--because to find oneself loving words and dictionaries is better than knowing 'tawny' and 'sable' (not sure why these two stuck, but I memorized them in sixth grade....)

Scare tactics might work. You could lead out the possibility of having to work in McDonald's for an entire lifetime because no one can understand a word being said from the mouths of the current generation. Might make vocabulary seem more essential. Of course, I am only dropping by to be absurd. :-)

I remember Mr. Foley, my English teacher from the ninth grade, who was a colorful character. He was constantly posing questions to students like "do you have a lugubrious physiognomy?" His hint was always to write down any word you saw and weren't familiar with and look it up. He also encouraged independent reading and required students to bring in words they'd found in independent reading books, along with their definitions. I picked up his tendency to drop five-syllable words with a mischievous twinkle, something my friends in subsequent years haven't always appreciated.

I think the point is to make it a game, to make it a game you can win, to make it a game that's fun to play. There's also the appeal of intellectual snobbery -- why else develop a hypertrophy of vocabulary?

Have them use the words in a sentence, and vote on the most interesting sentences (without knowing who wrote them; maybe you'd have to let different classes vote on each others' work.) Then the winning kid gets a homework pass.

I still remember two vocabulary sentences I wrote in high school:

Abyss. The fighting men rolled closer and closer to the yawning abyss.

Forte. The piano is not my forte. (Yes, we learned to pronounce it "fort" but it's still a visual pun.)

My teacher wrote a note on my work to the effect that she always enjoyed reading my sentences.
: )

Games!Games!Games!

1. Play a version of "B----t." Take all the words in a reading that you suspect they wont know. Write up 3 possible definitions, and do the show of hands (as well as "try this definition in a sentence" etc.) to poll the class. Then reveal the true answer. Do this for 45 minutes, then spend last 15 minutes of class on a pop quiz - for which you spent the entire class preparing for... You'll find out who pays attention... Or, similarly, at the start of the next class, quickly go through the list to see if it has been retained.

2. A version of "Husker Du" (not the band, the game!). See above.

Vocabulary works best with a bit of humor. Like advertising (which is structured to be didactic in the same manner). I'm sure you hate me for that analogy.

I remember I had only one class in high school that actually demanded we study and memorize vocabulary words. We were given a list for the week, and we were responsible for looking up definitions and memorizing them before a Friday quiz. The quiz required that we use all of the words in a short story -- and I mean short: probably no more than a page, hand-written in class during the maybe 20-minute time slot allotted for the quiz. The following Monday, our teacher returned the quizzes with corrections/grades but he also chose the most entertaining of those stories and read them aloud. Certainly, there was a kind of embarrassment factor there, for shy students like me, so perhaps it wasn't the greatest pedagoical approach to teaching vocab, but thanks to a few great, humorous writers who took that class with me, I can assure you that I remember more words from that course than any other. I'm remembering the teacher fondly, too. He just recently passed away after devoting almost an entire lifetime to teaching.

Merriamwebster.com has a free game called "dictionary devil" that appears a couple of times a week in it's "game of the day" section.
Their "Syn City" is also a good exercise for pointing out various meanings of the same word.

I play both regularly. At 50, I'm not too old to learn new words.

When I teach Spanish I try to highlight similarities between new vocabulary words and related words that they already know or words that they know in other languages. For example, this week we had "escritor" - writer - which I pointed out comes from the verb "escribir" - to write - which they already learned, and the English "scribe" and "script." With "ojal·" - an expression meaning approximately "I hope" or "if only" - we talked about its roots in the Arabic "wa sha'a Allah" (i.e. "inshallah"), which means something close to "God willing."

Erin, I recall the regular method of my old 7th (and 10th) grade English teacher, Mr. Shuttleworth. Every Friday we would have a short vocab quiz in which all the words to be tested were culled from student submissions. That is, every week (also on Friday, I think) all students in the class would submit three words that were new to them--including the definition and the context (specific written sentence or spoken quotation) in which the word was used. Mr. Shuttleworth would then select 10 of the total mass of words and would share that list of 10 with the class on Monday.

The nature of the quiz was basic. The ten words would appear and for each word you would provide the appropriate part of speech. For the odd numbered words, you would write the definition, while for the even numbered words you would use the word in a sentence. Also, the sentence could not be something like "I knew it was an abyss because it was a gaping void." That is, the sentence should have a context of its own; it should not be simply the definition couched in a sentence. (I'm somehow reminded of the Christopher Durang play "For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls," in which Lawrence names each member of his collection of glass coctail stirrers "thermometer--because it's made of glass," or "thermometer--because it's long and thin." Anyway...

Mr. Shuttleworth would also share with the class his favorite sentences from our quizzes when he returned them on Mondays.

Tell them to read books and look up the words they don't know.

Word Guru, Charles Harrington Elster, has written novels for students that are specifically designed for vocab building/SAT prep--while still being fun to read. I have read "Tooth and Nail," but he also has a new novel that recently came out (http://members2.authorsguild.net/chelster/works.htm). You might want to check these out to see if they would be appropriate for your students.

I remember doing two exercises when I was in junior high, but they could be adapted for other levels:

1) Word snakes -- make up a grid of letters that spell words up, down and diagonally. Don't give them the list of words, just make them find as many as they can, maybe award the most words found. This way they have to look up new words in the dictionary and see if it real, rather than simply finding words that they already know.

E.g

z o o w
e o a t
b r g u

I can quickly find: "tar", "oat", "brat", "zoo", "two", "tug", "zebra", "brag", "goat", "gut", "boo", and "zoot" (look it up, it's a real word! it's these obscure words that make it fun). Get the students to cross off the words that everyone has, see if someone found a word no one else did, etc.

2) Have your students make a "said" list -- think of all the other words that can replace "said" when writing a quote.

E.g "I hate doing vocab exercises!" she ____.

said
yelled
exclaimed
quoted
mused
etc....

When I did this exercise I managed to find over 600!!! replacements for the word "said". I will never forget this exercise or the teacher who gave it to me. =)

Some of the above have it right. Get 'em to read something interesting with new words and clever usage. But what? How about history, human nature murder, intrigue, war, love, comedy, tragedy?
In one word-Shakespeare. Many of the Bard's works now have recent, filmed versions that will engage kids in a complimentary manner. Baz Luhrman's Romeo & Juliet is a fine example. Sent more kids to the stacks than any other movie I know.

Echoing the Shakespeare comment. There is no better way to teach children the word Strumpet than to have them read/watch Othello.

I had a wonderful 7th grade class called Vocabulary Reading. We learned Latin and Greek roots, which enabled us to decipher the meaning of new words. We also looked permutations of words: caesar to czar to kaiser. I found it lots of fun.

In high school, we played that game where you make up definitions for words and mix them in with the real definition, and people have to pick the correct one (I remember quite a triumph when I fooled EVERYONE - even someone with Cajun roots - with the definition of "Lagniappe" as "a type of cherry brandy")

We also wrote sentences using the words, a task I always enjoyed. But maybe I'm just weird; I'm the kind of person who loves finding exactly the right word for a situation.

Another possibility would be to offer a "bounty" (points, or some kind of small prize) for people who find the vocabulary words in outside reading (although that might be kind of easy to cheat using Google, I don't know).

When I took an immersion German semester in college, it was remarked that our class advanced remarkably faster than other similar classes had. The professor's theory was that it was because we were a bunch of cut-ups who turned out to be equally as interested in being able to be funny and silly in German as we were in English, and the ability to joke had required a deeper understanding of all things vocabulary- and grammar-related.

Why does a child learn vocabulary? Because he (= he/she, please) is interested. Why would a teen not learn vocabulary? Because he is not interested.

When I was a kid I gravitated toward more adult books because the ones written for kids were boring. Nowadays, I'd suggest exposing them to some of the more adult comic books and graphic novels. You'd be amazed at the sophistication of that genre today.

Naughty books by good authors are a good avenue, too. Of course, you may get into trouble from bluenoses who confuse refinement with virtue...