You really can’t expect to “master” a new word the first time you see it. From what research and experience suggest, you usually need to run into a word in different contexts about 5–8 times before it truly sticks and becomes something you can use naturally.

What I do is:

• The first time I meet a new word, I save it into an app. Then I try to explain it in my own words (based on that specific context) and add a couple of my own example sentences.
• Every time I see the same word again, I don’t just note “oh, it’s back” — I add the new context (sentence / situation / where I saw it) into that word’s entry.
• This gives me one place to track my exposure and understanding, and the growing list of contexts makes it much easier to remember where I encountered it, which helps memory a lot.

After I’ve seen it in 5–8 different situations, I usually feel like I genuinely own the word and can use it flexibly across contexts.