This is not something that you are likely to be able to do intentionally, but it’s really nice when it does happen; and with the large number of compound words in Japanese it happens quite a bit.
For example, today I learned 「栽培（さいばい）」, the word for cultivating crops of any kind. Looking it up, I found that I had, in effect, learned a bunch of other words automatically, because it’s part of quite a lot of compounds. For example, 「温室栽培（おんしつさいばい）」, greenhouse gardening;「果樹栽培（かじゅさいばい）」, fruit growing; 「栽培所（さいばいしょ）」, plantation; 「栽培種（さいばいしゅ）」, agricultural variety or species; 「テラス栽培（てらすさいばい）」, terrace growing; and several more.
And the fact that an easily recognizable word forms a part of so many compounds makes it more likely that you’ll be able to infer the meaning of a new word in reading or listening. You read or hear a word, note that 栽培 is a part of it, and immediately you can tell (even without context) that this new word has something to do with raising crops, which narrows the meaning down a great deal.
