kitten sent me a list taken from the webpage below. Out of curiosity, I went down the list and kept track of the number of words for which I didn't know the definition.
List of 100
There were four--abstemious, inculcate, moiety and obsequious.
How about you? Are lawyers or scientists more literate than the average person on the street?
Tom
List of 100
There were four--abstemious, inculcate, moiety and obsequious.
How about you? Are lawyers or scientists more literate than the average person on the street?
Tom
Labels: fun, information, knowledge, Tet
And how many of these does the "average" person know?
To tell you the truth, Kevin, I have no idea. I'm pretty sure most of these are over my current college Freshmens' heads judging from their writing.
From what I remember of 40 years ago or so, a senior in a college-bound high school English class would have known about 80-85% of them. Certainly we got words like these on our SATs and ACTs in the verbal sections.
Average? I am not sure what that means, other than half of the population is below it.
Tom
I got a 9: abstemious, jejune, moiety, orthography, quotidian, ziggurat, bowdlerize, circumlocution, and lugubrious. But I know what they all mean now!
Tom,
Just goes to show...you do NOT know everything!
Yes, but do I successfully know what I don't know I know?
NO!
Tom
Tom, I would have thought you'd know "obsequious"! Not attacking your intellect, I was just genuinely shocked.
I wasn't really counting because there were quite a few I didn't know. However, I'd put the number around 20 or so. There were only a handful that I hadn't heard of before, but some of them I've read and understood from the context, but alone I have no semblence of an idea of what they mean.
My favorite word on the list is definitely "Churlish".
"Elderwife said...
Tom,
Just goes to show...you do NOT know everything!"
HAHA, I laughed out loud on that one...
Why are people saying these are hard, again? I know them all. Then again, I went to a church school where the punishment for failing your vocabulary lesson might be a whack to the knuckles.
The original publishers certainly aren't treating them as hard, since they're on a vocabulary list for intelligent 12th graders.
Tom
What does it mean by "to know"? What's the threshold?
I've seen all of these words before.
I know what almost all of them are generally about.
I could give a fairly accurate dictionary definition to a lot of them.
And for quite a few of them I could discuss the term in depth at a knowledgeable level for quite a long time, especially the science related terms. That said, I would definitely have to look up moiety and bowlderize to know what they meant.
Tom - There were 18 words I didn't know, but that dont mean shit.
One question for you - can you kick my ass?
Midget, I don't kick people's asses.
I am much more likely to put two lanes of a superhighway through your house.
Tom
TommyDaCommie:
I would love it if you'd post the superhighway story sometime.
I'm not sure of the legal implications of the story, and I do not want to write anything that has a possibility of getting him fired before retirement.
I'll post it after he retires, (which might not be too far in the future, since he has to get his foot reattached to his leg-bones today).
Tom
Thankfully the only one I knew was inculcate. Now I know them all.