Test your vocabulary

terr said:
Aquarians, English is fun because it has, by far, the biggest vocabulary out of all languages. When I read Russian (which is my native tongue) it is pretty rare that I come across a word I don't know, and it is usually a neologism that appeared in the last few decades.

I also speak Hebrew pretty fluently, but street Hebrew. Literary Hebrew is tough.

When reading books in English it is pretty often that I see some word I don't know, although I do have to admit that you can see, in your mind's eye, the author reaching for a thesaurus. Like "refulgent". Really?
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@terr Then boy do I have the book for you.


Can spend a lifetime in that book, but will make you a wordsmith.
 
terr said:
Aquarians, English is fun because it has, by far, the biggest vocabulary out of all languages. When I read Russian (which is my native tongue) it is pretty rare that I come across a word I don't know, and it is usually a neologism that appeared in the last few decades.

I also speak Hebrew pretty fluently, but street Hebrew. Literary Hebrew is tough.

When reading books in English it is pretty often that I see some word I don't know, although I do have to admit that you can see, in your mind's eye, the author reaching for a thesaurus. Like "refulgent". Really? But then that's how I learn new words :) Thank you Kindle for including the dictionary feature.
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You may be an outlier. Anywayz since you say you Russian, does "cucuruz" mean anything to you on the first encounter?

Apparently it's of Slavic descent, word for "corn". Not "mais" as in Italian, not "porumb" as in Romanian (from palumbus, the Latin word for "pidgeon", apparently they thought the corn cob looks like a pidgeon :P).
 
Aquarians said:
You may be an outlier. Anywayz since you say you Russian, does "cucuruz" mean anything to you on the first encounter?
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"Kukuruza" yes. Funny enough when I looked its etymology up, apparently it is probably from Rumanian "kukurus" - which is a pinecone?
 
Overnight said:
@terr Then boy do I have the book for you.

Can spend a lifetime in that book, but will make you a wordsmith.
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:) When I was a kid, I used to read the dictionary. Thesaurus is a better alternative, because you don't have to wade through the chaff to get to the gems.

I am trying to get my 9-year-old to like esoteric English words too, so I made it a game. We learn new weird words (like sisyphean, or apocryphal) then try to use them in everyday conversations. Or I misuse a word like that and she has to catch me.

So far we're up to a few hundred such words, and she remembers them pretty well. I just hope she doesn't get ostracized at school for using them.
 
This test is very much base on honour system. People can simply lie about their vocabulary size. It's not reliable. If they really want to find out about people's true vocabulary size. They need to ask people to form a sentence with those words or ask them true or false whether a word is used correctly in a sentence.
 
I scored about 13000, I guess a decent number for a foreigner that never gave a sh*it about learning the language properly.

Now that we are improving the test format, how about to sit down in front of a paper with a pencil and write down the words you know. Time =1h . A good test as well as a torture.

Ape can talk, ape is happy.
 
17,800
Bloody foreigner forever :fistbump:

Latin helped in understanding meaning of some words I didn't even know existed in English.
 
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