compare input to an object arraylist

compare input to an object arraylist

I would like to compare the input from a JTextField to all the elements in
a string arraylist. If the input is equal to an element in the list I
would like the program to acknowledge by saying "This is in my
vocabulary.", and if it is not, I would like the program to say "This is
NOT in my vocabulary." In my code, I have tried getting this to work buy I
always get the message "This is NOT in my vocabulary." even if the input
matches an element in my list. How can I get this to work properly?
Here is my code, in it AI is where the list that is being compared is.
package Important;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import AI.*;
public class TextActions implements ActionListener{
private String hero;
private Vocabulary vocab1 = new Vocabulary();
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
e.getSource();
hero = e.getActionCommand();
if (vocab1.Adjectives.equals(hero)){
System.out.println("This word is in my vocab");
}else{
System.out.println( hero + " is not in my vocab");
}
//CompareWords(hero);
}
public void CompareWords(String readme){
if (vocab1.Adjectives.contains(readme)){
//System.out.println("This word is in my vocab");
}
}
}