It's a great tip! At school days, while reading English books, I tried to sense the overall meaning instead of a particular unknown word! It really works!!
GRE Verbal exam is exceptionally tricky in providing words that you have NEVER heard before! Even if you memorize 1000 word meanings, they will come up with 1000 other words. The "trick" to success is to guess the meaning of the word accurately from the context of the sentence / paragraph.
