I'm a big fan of using a whole range of methods to remember what French words mean, and I'm going to show you a few examples ...
For a start, there's quite a few French words which are just tweaked versions of closely-related English words... mind you, the actual tweaking process might well have been the other way round .... happily, the method works even if the resemblance is accidental ....
sol ... meaning ground or soil, is surely related to "soil"
ôter .... meaning "to remove" is surely linked to English "oust"
goulot .. meaning "neck" is just "gullet"
ranger .. "to tidy up" .... must be a version of "arrange"
scinder ... to split up ..... well, English has the word " asunder"
étanche ... waterproof .... watertight/waterproof ... sounds a lot like "staunch"
cendres ... ashes .... sounds a lot like "cinders"
gui ... mistletoe ... and the berries are extremely gooey !
frisquet ...chilly .... surely linked to " it's a bit brisk"
ragaillardir ... to " buck up" .. what it all boils down to is "re-cheer-up" or "re-strong" .. the "ra-" start is really "rea-" squashed up a bit, and "gai" = merry and "gaillard " = strong, bawdy etc.... German is full of cobbled-together words like that.
...plenty more where they came from ...
There's also neat ways of using mini-acronyms to remember words... for example, there's lots of easily confused French words which can be separated ...
attendre/entendre .... "ENT" = ear,nose and throat... just remember the "ear" bit... to hear. That's all you need to know to split the pair.
dessus/dessous ... u .... indicates "up" and therefore "above" and "on top"
ou... opposite of up.... and therefore "under" , "beneath"
Not perfect, but it does the job.
The truth, though, is that it's much better if you make up your own ways of doing it, depending on which pairs you find confusing, which words don't stick in your memory... whatever you need to do. Remember the poor old Prince de Motordu, who confused all of his words and instead of wearing a chapeau he wore a chateau, and spent mealtimes in his salle-a-danger !
Here's what I had to say about him ...
http://bebrilliantatfrench.weebly.com/blog/motordu
Here's one of the many excellent books about him ..