MetaChat - Crap. I got 64.

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09 June 2007

Crap. I got 64. →[More:]
But I swear, most of them at least looked familiar!

Sigh. Today I couldn't understand why I couldn't find pictures of "wondering jews." I feel horribly inarticulate and ungrammatical these days. I suppose I need to learn to say less.

post by: Citizen Premier at: 22:38 | 18 comments

I think I would get a decent score but since I am lazy and I would need to look all of them up I may never know.

posted by arse_hat 09 June | 22:51

80 hard and fast knowing and 16 knowing the general sense of the word, 4 I'd have to look up. My trouble is in spelling, which has always puzzled me, how can I have a high vocabulary but suck so hard in actually writing it out?

posted by edgeways 09 June | 23:14

I'm on there, and loquacious too. But not interrobang.

This means something.

posted by ROU Xenophobe 09 June | 23:37

It would not be fair for me to take this test. Would it?

If only someone taught me how to use these words, not just know them... arghhh.

posted by carmina 09 June | 23:48

I had to look up jejune. Also antebellum, because I'd only heard "antebellum south." Turns out that's all it means.

It helps that my boss has an enormous vocabulary and uses probably 90% of these in his everyday speech.

posted by small_ruminant 10 June | 00:04

We were drilled in these words in high school. They were our so-called "SAT words" and we studied lists containing these and hundreds more. Today, in my casual reading, I still come across certain words and can feel the deep recognition as my reptile brain says "SAT WORD".

posted by Miko 10 June | 00:05

Not bothering to properly count, I'd say 1 that was unrecognized, 5 were shaky definitions, the remainder old friends, to some degree or another.

posted by Triode 10 June | 00:08

Also, points off for the authors, since Antebellum and Bellicose share the same root word.

posted by Triode 10 June | 00:13

What an odd list.

Gamete, mitosis, chromosome? If you didn't do any biology at high school I'm not sure why you "need to know" the words gamete and mitosis, and a woolly non-scientific idea of what a chromosome is surely enough to get most people through life.

Why nonsectarian instead of sectarian?

I didn't recognise moiety. Moiety doesn't appear in the Times archive, so I assume it's rare in Britain.

posted by matthewr 10 June | 00:17

is=>is is

posted by matthewr 10 June | 00:20

Also, points off for the authors, since Antebellum and Bellicose share the same root word.

That's where my year of Latin saved me. I have a vague sense of all the words there, so with context I don't think I'd have to jump to a dictionary if I read them, but I thought I had a good vocabulary. But I think it's just that most of my friends have terrible vocabularies.

posted by Citizen Premier 10 June | 01:11

woolly non-scientific idea

I'm pretty sure those died out after the Ice Age.

posted by Citizen Premier 10 June | 01:43

If you didn't do any biology at high school

Now in my day, you had to take biology to graduate high school. Biology isn't required anymore? i did hear some schools were solving the evolution/creation thing by just not teaching either.

Like Miko, when I saw the list my brain said SAT WORD. Sadly, I've forgotten the definitions of some, but still know they were on one of those vocabulary lists I had to memorize all those years ago. I also try to pepper my speech and language with some of these five dollar words, but end up having to think too hard and use something simpler like "stuff".

posted by birdherder 10 June | 08:17

Huh. My brain hollered SPELLING BEE LIST.

I, too, am too lazy to look up every word to see if the definition residing in my brain matches the actual definition, which means I get to click away with the cheerful feeling that I know all but one or two words on the list.

Of course, since I'm not double-checking the defs, there's every possibility that I'm blithely employing these words in the wrong context. Ha! Blissful ignorance.

posted by Elsa 10 June | 10:26

birdherder, I went to school in Scotland. We did general 'Science' from age 12 to 13, and after that I took Physics and Chemistry.

posted by matthewr 10 June | 15:00

I hate shit like this. I only skimmed the list, and I was familiar with all the words that I noticed there, but stuff like this encourages people to actually USE words like "abstemious" and "pecuniary" instead of simpler words like, say, "moderate" and "monetary."

Those simpler words communicate the EXACT SAME THINGS (minus "OMG I'm so smart-- check out my vocabulary!"), but communicate them to more people.

Fancy-ass words can suck it.

posted by dersins 10 June | 15:18

I noticed neither "eschew" nor "obfuscation" in the list.
Also, I think the majority of high-schoolers right now would only recognize "evanesce" because of that whingey band.

posted by casarkos 10 June | 17:17

I had to look up "belie," I always get it wrong, including this time. The rest of them are words I know, although on casual inspection the only synonym for 'lugubrious' I could come up with was 'pathetic'.

Why are 'bowdlerize' and 'expurgate' both in here? Are the dictionary makers trying to tell us that the FBI has not not been here?

posted by ikkyu2 11 June | 04:27

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