Test Your Vocab

[gatso]

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

[rex008]

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 .

[EvilPie]

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.

[sweet potata!]

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

[EvilPie]

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+

[EvilPie]

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

Siimplez .

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.

[rex008]

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 .

[doubleup]

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

Siimplez .

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.

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.

  


  

[EvilPie]

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?

[thetank]

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.

[thetank]

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.

[EvilPie]

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.

[thetank]

A burgeoning vocabulary!

[EvilPie]

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.

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.

[thetank]

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.