Why do I know what that means?

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I know what all you guys mean. Just a few weeks ago my English teacher was surprised that I knew the word "usurp" after I had put it into a homework assignment the previous night. She asked me where I heard it (she thought it was a vocab word I had) and I just said I have a large vocabulary.

I was able to read things like CPR charts at age 2 but at that age mostly I could just read the words, I probably wasn't sure what they meant. But yea as I got older that definitely happened, and even now it does every once in a while. It happens with speaking too. I'll use a word instinctively in a certain situation and then start wondering why I used the word and whether or not I actually did correctly, because as far as I know I had no clue what the word meant. When I go and check later I usually find not only that I used it correctly, but that it was pretty much the best word conceivable for what I had been trying to say.

I used to get in trouble writing papers as a kid.

Teachers used to assume that:

1) somebody wrote the paper for me.
2) I plagarized it somewhere.

Because they couldn't believe that someone my age used college-level words!

I vote for the sythesis suggestion, I can remember as a young kid, adults would talk in front of me not thinking I could understand, and I just kept doing what I was doing, and picking their entire conversation.( I probably understood more than some of the people included)

I also can get the main idea of a paragraph written in any latin based language. Many rules are the same in these languages, one only looks to a root word and context to get meaning.

Another thing from my youth was if I didn't understand something, I would act like I did, and then listen intently to understand it. (mostly with social cues/ slang, etc.)

Very similar here. Reading at an early age, exceptionally large vocabularly growing up and still growing itself. Quite useful really. I still find it rather amazing that the average adult only uses about 800-1000 words in their normal vocabularly, though they might know more. I'd feel stifled if I only used that many words. English is the largest language in the world and, despite it's rather unlyrical prose, it can still be very expressive.

I also remember startling english teachers throughout school with my vocabularly and writing and reading skills. Only trouble I got in though was reading in class. I guess they assumed my skill with language was due to the reading so they didn't think it was copied/plagiarized.

Then there's certain words themselves. Like Paradox. I love the way that word rolls off the tongue. Others too. Ludicrous, Assassin, Venom, Web, Chimichanga, Trinitrotoluene, Ra, Unununium... Damn, so many words that just sound so mesmerizing (another good word) and so many more that just have hypnotic (another there!) meanings.

I had a lot of moment like the OP, expecially when I was a kid. I think there are 2 reasons:
1) people mainly learn things via "osmosis", you really don't study them but simply take them from your environment and you don't remember all you take in a conscious way.
2) when you are a child your memory skill is not developed like the one from an adult so you can actually learn something, remember the context but erase where you learned it and when.