blonde poker forum

http://www.testyourvocab.com/

"Your total vocabulary size is estimated to be: 32,600 words"

(quite a few I didn't know exactly what they meant in the list)

23,400

disappointed not to see

eyup
nowthen
ayeee
yur'reet

22,100 :-(

you read alot?

i read 4 books a year - max

21,700

Btw. I think Dan is lying about his score.

Books don't contain any of those ridiculous words that are of no use whatsoever apart from trying to belittle people.

30,400 but there were loads I didn't know???

I'm assuming there's an error and it should have read 3,400

agreed!

26,500, not something I can get braggadocio about ;)

thought I'd end up ticking a box for each of them when I saw the second page

26,200. 

LOL.  The link was on another forum, and loads had higher scores than I did.  Wait for AndrewT, Rex, Tighty and Tank to post their scores.  Oh, and gatso, proberly...

32.900.

Tatterdemalion ftw

20,900 but I actually did it by the book

Words not good 25.8k

..and yet you're one of the funniest people in the world I think.

32700 but might be a bit of a funambulist with some of my answers

23,700

22,500

27,200   meh!

35,100

But then I thought, I'm only assuming that the definitions of the words I ticked are the correct ones. So I went back and checked any I wasn't 100% certain of - one of them I was wrong about which would change the outcome to 34,900.

But now I've looked up the definition, I do know it, so I think I might claim the extra 200 back - they might come in handy ;D

30,500



Got to agree with Evil Pie..

That sir is a terminalogical inexactitude.

28100....I would like to thank Will Self for increasing my score recently by using the imbroglio and making me look it up....somewhat disappointed that epiphenomenal wasn't included for the same reason.

150

Thank you sir.

So many liars in this thread who just checked the box because they'd heard the word before but don't really know what it means.

26,800.

33700

fk knows how, were loads I didn't know

I got 31,000 and then I went back and ticked ALL the boxes to see the max, it came to 43,500 for a 1966 brit who reads loads.. :)

30,700

Arse

There should be some placebo words in there (there might be for all I know..) - if you check a word that doesn't exist it's gg.

33,500. I will now list them all.......:)

I think there were, well there were some I didn't tick because I thought they were red herrings and actually misspelt versions of real words. But not sure if that's actually the case.

37,300

I did go back and check a couple I wasn't 100% on, but I was pretty much right on them, so I left them ticked.

I probably average a couple of books a week, from a fairly broad fiction/non-fiction range. And I usually read the News Review section of the Sunday Times front to back (even including Michael Winner!), which must increase vocab by at least 100 words a week :).

And I know you should never start sentences with "And".

I think there are a few people in this thread that have either not done it properly or are full of shit!  ;D

Too much hard work for my liking but I'd imagine I'd have got about 30k like most other blondes did.

you do realise it's how many words you know, not how high you can count?

24,500 and no way Kin had that many ticks.  He might have fleas though.

Definitely.

I can go through the list and add a load that I've heard of and could happily use in a sentence knowing roughly what they mean.

Ask me to properly define the word though which I think is the idea and I've got no chance.

i agree

i hesitated on "shard" - obv a word i know and could use, but define is altogether different

25,600. Must admit i expected it to be a lot less.

Books read i do not. Me fail Engrish, dats unpossible.

28,500 which is 56 words less than the average 33 year old according to the stats, but combining that with passing my eleven plus ten minutes ago, I'm starting to think I'm a goddam genius ;topofclass;

Disagree

I don't contest that there are some arseholes who use big words just to show off.

I'd raise the point of people who go to the gym to get buff. Some of them are arseholes pumping the iron and doing the crunches just to show their bods off and they think it makes them better than other people, but that's not the only reason to go to the gym. Some gym goers are definately not arseholes, they have a variety of reasons to attend and doing so enriches and improves their quality of life.

Similarly, with the words.

In general I'd agree, there's no point in using a simple word which approximately describes what you're trying to say when there might be a more complicated one that is precisely correct.

But I think it's a question of degree - it takes a long time for a word to be officially classed as obsolete but there are quite a few which aren't really used for anything other than semantic showing off.

Agree in a way, and some of the words here may only be used for showing off. But disagree that there's no point using - or at least, knowing - the more complicated and more precise word. Or indeed a more complicated word that isn't necessarily more precise but which just conveys a subtly different idea. You could probably argue that no two words are exact synonyms, since word meanings change gradually through their use, and so the contexts in which they've been used previously come to be part of their definition. Words also have their own sound and register, which differentiates the effect that they have and so consequently their meaning.

At the root of it though, it doesn't really matter whether specific words are often used or not in spoken or written form. They still, if you know them or are aware of them, interrelate with thought, and therefore, all things being equal, more words will make/allow you to think better.

I'm not sure the idea that reading lots of books helps you with this test is necessarily really true. I suspect most people who do well in it do so largely because of their knowledge of other languages. If you did Latin and French (but mainly Latin) at school then you're going to understand and therefore hold on to a lot of these words once you've seen them somewhere (or even just know the meaning of them without ever having seen them before - deracinate, adumbrate, legerdemain, uxoricide etc), so accusations of cheating may not be very well founded. I wonder whether a wider knowledge of classical languages is a big reason why the over-50s have a greater vocabulary, as they say is the case at the end of the test.

28,500.  Bit disappointed as this apparently makes me below average for my age and would have expected better of myself tbh.  Gonna take the opportunity to learn some new words though, lest I get caught out next time I'm in convo with the british cowboy or the brief :D

TBH I would be surprised if that is true.  I would imagine that the average IQ on this forum would be way above the average and yet most seemed to have scored around the same with a handful of exceptions both ways.

Which bit did you disagree with? Saying the words were of no use was a bit tongue in cheek to be honest. Obviously they have a genuine use or they wouldn't even exist as words.

The main point I was making was that just because Stu reads a lot of books doesn't mean he should know lot's of words. This is because books generally won't contain those obscure words that are of no use whatsoever apar..............

Don't worry about it Claire.

I'm pretty sure that the average is skewed by people cheating or just not doing it properly.

It's also a crap test as thick people who'd bring the average down won't even attempt it.

yep i think it's also just generally crap.

I just tried it from my daughter's pov and it's coming out at only half the average for her, which is just nonsense as irl she's ahead of the curve on reading/spelling/writing stories etc so her vocab should be at least average.  i had to make a lot of assumptions though as i don't think getting her up to take the test would be a great idea :)  will try it with her tomorrow.

26000

Potentially setting yourself up for a fall there when she scores 30k.....

heh - she actually did a bit better than I gave her credit for - 7900.  Still think the 'average' 8 year old score of 11k+ is pushing it a bit.

She obviously likes to keep it simple when speaking with you ;)

this is me

The second bit, but now that you mention it, not a big fan of the first statement either. :)

I think I'm going to stand by the first statement. I'd be very surprised if any of the books that Stu reads contain any of the following words.

 sobriquet
 soothsayer
 disjunctive
 nostrum
 lothario
 mien
 puckish
 duplicitous
 noisome
 melange
 leitmotiv
 verdure
 imbroglio
 maladroit
 impolitic
 epigone
 potboiler
 captious
 bibulous
 malapropism
 tricorn
 bruit
 pabulum
 conflate
 burgeon
 redolent
 dirge
 chivvy
 udder
 inveigle
 prig
 adumbrate
 manacle
 prurient
 seamy
 parsimonious
 purloin

I'd also be interested if somebody could define a few of these and give me an instance of where they may be of use.

I would be very surprised if he read a book which didn't have the word UDDER in.

Bollocks!! Thought I'd checked the list for any obvious ones!!

Apart from udder then ;)

I'd be quite surprised if he'd never read one with manacle or soothsayer in. also while it may not be in many books surely everyone knows what a tricorn is?

obv, its like a unicorn but with three horns.

Didn't know any of these 3 words when I took the test.

Why would I need to know what a tricorn was?

you don't need to know what an elephant is. I'd be surprised if you didn't though

The maladroit handling of the FTP imbroglio by US authorities might well end up causing Lederer to exhibit a grateful mien, despite the alleged financial legerdemain.

Siimplez :).

Excellent!!

Translation please. This may help me understand what the hell they mean.

fyi Evilpie, nobody thinks any less of you because you got a weak score in this.

It was quite an impressive score compared to my effort in the 11+

Thanks to google I've managed to translate this for a person with only 23k words in their vocabulary.

I consider myself to be reasonably well educated and yet I've never heard any of these words before now.

So where do the words above come from? They obviously aren't in common usage but were they at some point in the past?

Why do we need several words with the same meaning?

Was maladroit formerly the only word available that would fit the above sentence then someone decided to invent another word?

To the people who know these words and can happily fit them in to a sentence would you use them regularly or would you use the more common ones? Is the reason for not using these uncommon words because nobody understands them and you get sick of explaining or being accused of trying to belittle people by people like me?

If people don't use these words often are they just going to die to everyone who doesn't play scrabble?

I'm genuinely interested in this by the way, not just being awkward because I got a bad score.

I'd never use any of that lot in conversation, but sometimes when writing. Depends who it was aimed at.

I suspect most the words listed there have fairly old etymologies history of derivation. Almost certainly used to be more common than they are now. Many convey a much more precise definition of an idea than can be replaced with a simpler word. Eg, "mien" is much more about the outward appearance of your emotional state, not necessarily your true mood, and you can say that in one 4 letter word. "Mien" is very much a word that should be used a lot in live poker hand analysis :).

You are missing the point.  Words obviously go out of use and are replaced over time and new words emerge eg "pwnd" "shippit".  The quiz was only designed to test how many words you were familiar with and presumably applying some assumptions from this to estimate your likely vocabulary size.  It doesn't mean anything beyond that.  I used to speak Latin ffs (most of which I have now forgotten apart from amo amas amat amamus amatis amant) and only learned it because I would have been beaten by a mad jesuit if I didn't.  You know what you know and that is just it.

  


  

How am I missing the point?

I obviously get the point of the OP was to see roughly how many words you know.

Aren't I allowed to expand the original point in to a different discussion based on the results?

I would be very sorry to lose the words duplicitous, burgeon and conflate because I'm a fan.

Duplicitous.

If someone has been duplicitous, they've been doing something deceitful. Human beings are complicated peoples, we can all do bad things from time to time; it doesn't necessary make us bad people.

Instead of saying duplicitous I could say two faced instead. Describing someone as as being guilty of behaviour that was "two faced" or saying that they have been "stabbing you in the back" suggests (for my money) that not only have they done something bad, but they are bad people. I'd feel the need to add a caveat that they are not necessary bad people (and I usually wouldn't wish to encumber the point I'm making by continually apologising for myself.)

Duplicity comes in when I want to describe the same sort of behaviour, but in a softer way that doesn't condemn someone's character as being irrevocably two faced.

JK Rowing used the word duplicity in the children's book Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. (she also uses the word manacles in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

Burgeon

To begin to grow or increase rapidly.

This word is just an awesome one because (again, for my money) the imagery. It sounds a bit like barging and bulging and it really gets across the idea that you're not just describing growth, but a real impatient growth, out of control even.

I much prefer the adjective burgeoning to the verb burgeon. I don't think I'm alone in this. Google book search return 994,000 English language books that contain the word burgeoning, and only 78,700 that contain the word burgeon.

With nearly a million books to choose from, if you tell me what sort of genre you like, I'm pretty sure I'll find a book in that genre that contains the word burgeoning. (They can't all be books for prigs.)

Conflate

To conflate two things is to confuse two things. I frequently have cause to use this word, and I don't use it to belittle people, quite the opposite.

For example, I could say in a discussion about economics that somebody is confusing tax rates with tax revenues.

There's a danger that such a statement carries the implicit message that I'm saying the person confusing the two things is a confused person (which they could easily take to mean as being simple, stupid, etc)

On the other hand (no economics discussion can be complete without saying on the other hand, even when it's not an economics discussion but a vocabulary discussion) if I instead say that I think they may be conflating tax rates and tax revenue, I think this is better. They may still think I'm being priggish, but I guess sometimes that really can't be helped.

Soothsayer I'm pretty sure will be in children's books. Lothario is another that I'd imagine you'd find all over the place in all different sorts of genres of fiction and non fiction. Udder I think someone mentioned already.

Disjunctive, Leitmotiv, Potboiler and malapropism are all meta language and I would say they do things that less obscure single words could not.

If you came across puckish, dirge or seamy I think you'd usually be able to tell from the context what they mean and you'd move on the next sentence having missed nothing, (puckish is a nice word is it not)
Similarly with melange, impolitic, chivvy and inviegle I imagine the context would rarely leave doubt as to what they mean.

The other ones, a lot of them are obscure, but they are all being used. (The wonderful google book search allows you to search for your word in books published after a certain date. All the ones I checked were certainly still being used in some new books - though they may well all be books for prigs) I don't recognise most of them, but the authors may have their reasons to use them and love them just like I love the word burgeoning.

Thanks to recent events on this thread I have expanded my vocabulary to add duplicitous, conflate, burgeon, maladroit, mien, imbroglio, legerdemain and of course thanks to Gatso, tricorn and elephant.

I've retaken the test and am pleased to announce that as well as these 9 words I've also apparently learnt 2,491from somewhere going from 21,700 to 24,200 in total.

What a happy day.

A burgeoning vocabulary!

This is a very important point to be fair.

Someone who reads a lot of books would probably see these words quite often but then it comes down to how people read that would determine whether or not they actually even noticed the word.

Lots of people just skim read so would understand what was going on but wouldn't even realise there was a new word to be learnt.

I guess it's an observation thing and a desire to improve ones vocabulary that determines whether you'd actually notice the word, put it in to context and add it to your own memory for future use.

Also thanks to dirge I have added another 300 words to my already burgeoning vocabulary.

Since smartphones have come along I've been looking up words much more often.

It breaks the rhythm of your reading too much to stop and look up a word in a physical dictionary, and it's not really practical to have a computer with you whenever you read.

I heart my dictionary app. It has a history feature where you can see at a glance all the words you've looked up recently. A great thing to look through if you wish to cement them into your long term memory.

JungleCat03 wins the prize for being the most frequent user of the word burgeoning on the blonde poker forum. Six different threads.

Tightend gets an honorable mention having used it in 4 different threads.

I haven't played poker for 15 months, I have no idea why I'm here.

I think a lot of these words more accurately describe something than the words you could replace them with.  The best example I can come up with (which wasn't included here but illustrates it) is the word melancholy.  You could substitute sadness for it but it doesn't quite have the same meaning and melancholy is more descriptive.  In many ways it is like the old adage about eskimos having hundreds of different words for snow - it depends upon how simply or otherwise you want to be able to describe or explain something.

gonna keep this brief as I'm a bit drunk but a quick convo in the pub tonight between myself, claw and andrewt saw us in agreement that we couldn't believe that someone who likes dating strippers doesn't know what a manacle is. you need to meet dirtier strippers

we should have just asked matt when we saw him in the pub later (although you may have been off removing your hoops then)

I think its just about what you know/don't know. I wouldn't say my vocab range was particularly good, and there were plenty that i didn't know. On the other hand I research/read often obscure medical based stuff a lot, so regularly come across a lot of the latin based words.

Personally i'm a lazy fucker, and use basic English most of the time.

34,600

Suppose I have to read the thread now!