Words and more words...

[fajrdrako]

A friend sent me a link to this nifty vocabulary test. "Nifty" was her word, not mine, but I agree.

It says I have an English vocabulary of 41,100 words. I was vaguely insulted. I think I know more words than that.

Of course I had to look up the ones I didn't know:

cantle - the raised hind part of a saddle
canula - this took me to cannula, Surgery - a metal tube for insertion into the body to draw off fluid or to introduce medication
clerisy - intelligentsia
epigone - an undistinguished imitator
fuliginous - sooty, smokey
mammon - material wealth
opsimath - a person who learns late in life
pule - to whimper
sparge - to scatter or sprinkle
vibrissae - one of the stiff, bristly hairs growing about the mouth of certain animals, as a whisker of a cat
williwaw -a violent squall that blows in near-polar latitudes, as in the Strait of Magellan, alaska, and the Aleutian Islands

I sort of knew "mammon", but I thought I was confusing it with manna, and "sort of knowing" doesn't count. I think I would have known "canula" (or "cannula") if I came across it in context, but I couldn't remember. I really like "clerisy".

Comments

[isagel]

That was interesting. I felt there were many words I had never seen or had seen but couldn't define, but I still came in at an estimated vocabulary of 35,600 words, which according to their statistics is better than the average native speaker. Huh.

[fajrdrako]

Well, you do have a very good English vocabulary. I credit fannish activity! (Aside from native talent, of course.)

[thistlethorn]

I already knew pule, canula, and vibrissae. The rest were new to me.

[thistlethorn]

Took the quiz-- my vocabulary is estmated at 36,500 words. Here's what's so funny -- two of the words on the quiz I had just learned in the last week.

[fajrdrako]

That's so cool! ... It's all in the timing.

[fajrdrako]

I quite like 'clerisy'. I'm looking for an excuse to use it.