I call it "cross-referencing". Here's how it works.

Example sentence: The man knew his way around the language, no doubt about it. At the same time, he had the rare gift - for a rabble-rouser - of not allowing the words to obscure his ideas.

In this sentence, "rabble-rouser" is the word I do not know. What I would do is, I would go to Merriam-Webster and put "rabble-rouser" in the search box. Normally, the word looking up process would end after reading its definition (one that stirs up the masses of the people (as to hatred or violence)). However, with "cross-referencing", I would scroll down till the end of the page to a section called "Recent Examples on the Web".

And this is what shows up:

The ensemble includes two couples — Theo convinces her girlfriend, Alisha (Jayme Lawson), to join the action, while Portland rabble-rousers Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Logan (Lukas Gage) are dealing with the aftermath of a previous arrest that may threaten the entire project. - Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 8 Apr. 2023

But, according to Sade, who was part of his entourage for the trip, the settlers considered the Kahanists rabble-rousers and agitators. - Ruth Margalit, The New Yorker, 20 Feb. 2023

Two more example sentences. I would then copy one of the sentence, paste it into google search box, and click on the first result that popped up. I check the date and the author to make sure I find the exact article where the example sentence showed up. For the other one, I would do the same.

I then do a Ctrl+F page search to find the word and highlight it. If my estimation is that I can finish reading the article within the next 5 minutes, I would read the entire article, paying special attention to the context where the highlighted word shows up. If the article is too long, or I just don't think it is worth my time because its topic is not appealing to me at the moment, I would at least read the two paragraphs above and the two paragraphs below the highlighted word to get a good grasp of a broader context of the word in question. In the case of the word "rabble-rouser", I finished reading an interesting article on an indie film "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" and learnt something about an Israeli political figure.

This "cross-referencing" method works for me, because now whenever I see the word "rabble-rouser", two vivid characters would show up in my mind. They come from two separate contexts but two I have had deep engagements with. And I think that is how language learning should happen - naturally - through meaningful interactions with fun and memorable content, and not just word lists and grammar quizzes.