For intermediate to advanced learners, what strategies do you use to pick up on the subtle differences in meaning/nuance between similar words?

So, languages are full of near-synonyms. These are words with the same (or similar) dictionary meaning, but which perhaps have different connotations, collocations, and nuances. Often, context also plays a role, with these nuances being brought out differently in different situations. These are the kinds of things you just can't learn from a translation or simple dictionary entry.

I'm currently an upper intermediate learner of Japanese, and at this point, with the large part of the grammar down and a reasonably sized vocabulary, picking out these subtleties in nuance has became the bulk of my language learning effort. I know the basic solution is just exposure: that's how I picked up on them in English, that's how I continue to pick up on them when I learn a new English word, and obviously with enough time spent with the language I'll pick up on more and more of these nuanced differences in Japanese. But for those of you who are at a reasonably high level in your target language, I have a question. Are there any particular strategies you use to pick up on these nuances quicker? Are there any forms of study that are more conducive to it? What do you do when you look up the translation of a word from your native language, and see five or six different results that, from their dictionary entries, all look about the same?

Any tips or just discussion is welcome!

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