Test Your Vocab

[puzzlebox]

Originally Posted by DAISHI

Agreed with Puzzlebox. Half the obscure words I know are entirely unusable in reality are really confined to the world of GRE test taking and academic writings. And academic writers really just flaunt those words to be pompous.

I've noticed that with academic writing and find it horribly annoying. Perhaps it's encouraged/validated by the peer review system, but I don't see that there's much to be achieved in deliberately making your work more inaccessible.

Originally Posted by Vainamoinen

This test your vocabulary thing however deals with passive as opposed to active vocabulary.

I guess my point is that I consider it trivia.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by puzzlebox

I guess my point is that I consider it trivia.

But do you know the etymology of the word "trivia"?

Maybe above 25,000 words, we can assume that every even remotely essential word is already in the passive vocabulary. Everything above IS trivia (in its modern sense). So testing if those non-essential words are known might be the way to determine how large one's vocabulary is.

[Shadowknight1]

30,100. Some of those have come from my love of literature such as Lovecraft, some, like tenebrous, came from games.

[The Gentleman]

28,100.

Unsurprising to be fair.

[corruptbiggins]

29,900. There are some words I do understand what they mean but I'm not able to articulate a definition. Then there are some words which just mean nothing! So feel that's about accurate, and that reading a lot does help.

[WarpSpeed]

25,300. There were some words I recognized as real words, and I may have known the definition at some point, but it's been so long since I've seen them that I've forgotten, so under the rules, I didn't check their boxes.

There isn't really much of a purpose to knowing really obscure words unless you're making inside jokes with other word-trivia buffs.

[DAISHI]

Originally Posted by WarpSpeed

25,300. There were some words I recognized as real words, and I may have known the definition at some point, but it's been so long since I've seen them that I've forgotten, so under the rules, I didn't check their boxes.

There isn't really much of a purpose to knowing really obscure words unless you're making inside jokes with other word-trivia buffs.

Unfortunately in academia it's a self sustaining circle jerk of having to learn those obscure words.

[Icedhope]

Hell yeah! I am dumb as hell. I shouldn't relish in this fact but I do.

[flesk]

21,000. I'm not a native speaker, but knew several of the more archaic words from having read a lot of classic English literature. I'd say I have a fairly good understanding of English, but I'm not too good at writing or speaking it.

[Chyron8472]

23,000.

I did not check boxes of words for which I had only heard in a certain context yet would still be guessing at the correct usage/definition.

[Haggis]

21,500 apparently. It doesn't really matter, since I look up words that I'm not sure about, and if I'm looking for a word I don't know, I use a thesaurus.

And if I may recommend an online vocabulary tester that's actually useful: Word Dynamo. That one helps you learn new words.

[RetroVortex]

25,100 words

Not bad for a guy that never really reads! XD
(Wait.. Do Videogames count? If so then I guess I do read alot. Not so much the big words though)

[Darth Marsden]

Originally Posted by Haggis

And if I may recommend an online vocabulary tester that's actually useful: Word Dynamo. That one helps you learn new words.

Hmm. Tried this, and...

unaffected

- Blowing in sudden, strong blasts of wind.
- Sincere; genuine.
- In a wary manner.
- To get the better of in a struggle or conflict; conquer; defeat.

Is it just me, or do none of those potential descriptions match?

It was 'Sincere / Genuine', BTW.

EDIT: According to this one, I know 50,010 words. That sounds a little better, although there was a bit of guesswork involved, so it may not be as accurate. I'd still pick this one over Test Your Vocab though.

[Haggis]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

It was 'Sincere / Genuine', BTW.

That does fit, actually. Just google "define unaffected", and it's the second definition. (By the way, I use Google a lot as a dictionary, using the define command, it's very useful.)

EDIT: According to this one, I know 50,010 words. That sounds a little better, although there was a bit of guesswork involved, so it may not be as accurate. I'd still pick this one over Test Your Vocab though.

Yes, I tend to get higher scores on Word Dynamo as well. Even if you're guessing, there's a lot of educated guesswork going on - you might recognize word stems or affixes, and base your guess on that.

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by puzzlebox

I'd argue that it's far more useful to have a basic ability in a second language (or more) rather than knowing a lot of obscure words in your primary language. If you and I were to compare Spanish vocab, I'm sure we'd see how much "certifiably dumber" I am.

So basically what you're telling me is that I shouldn't feel inferior to you, but instead should feel inferior to divisionten, who has Japanese and Chinese and I think some of at least one other foreign language in there.

[FitzoliverJ]

35,800! Take that, Shakespeare!

http://www.dispositio.net/archives/501

[Vainamoinen]

My boss speaks Slovakian and Czech as a Native, German on an almost Native level (grammatical gender correct 99% of the time, she just can't get rid of her rhotic r), great Russian, understands Polish and, how couldn't she, English to boot. That's some language proficiency...

[Darth Marsden]

Originally Posted by FitzoliverJ

35,800! Take that, Shakespeare!

http://www.dispositio.net/archives/501

Holy hell. I UNDERSTOOD that. Go me!

[Desmodus87]

25,600 for me. That was actually pretty fun Going to have to look up the ones I didn't know. lmao

[JedExodus]

Originally Posted by Icedhope

Hell yeah! I am dumb as hell. I shouldn't relish in this fact but I do.

Being dumb is well underrated.

I didn't even have the patience to finish it. Hah!