You do not truly learn vocabulary by memorising lists. You learn vocabulary by building a rich mental network around words through repeated meaningful encounters.
A word is not a single thing in the brain. To “know” a word, you gradually acquire:
- its core meaning
- its different meanings
- its pronunciation
- its spelling
- its grammatical behaviour
- its common collocations
- its emotional tone/register
- the situations where people use it
- the speed and ease with which you can recognise and produce it
Vocabulary learning is therefore not memorisation but network construction.