Rather a bold tone in the title of this one, but let's hear what they have to say:
100 Words That All High School Graduates — And Their Parents — Should Know
BOSTON, MA — The editors of the American Heritage dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.
"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language."
Malaya sent me the link and said she knew most but not all, and she's got like, a PhD. In a field that involves heavy usage of words. With that in mind I had to try it myself. Bring on the words!
abjure
abrogate
abstemious
acumen
antebellum
auspicious
belie
bellicose
bowdlerize
chicanery
chromosome
churlish
circumlocution
circumnavigate
deciduous
deleterious
diffident
enervate
enfranchise
epiphany
equinox
euro
evanescent
expurgate
facetious
| fatuous
feckless
fiduciary
filibuster
gamete
gauche
gerrymander
hegemony
hemoglobin
homogeneous
hubris
hypotenuse
impeach
incognito
incontrovertible
inculcate
infrastructure
interpolate
irony
jejune
kinetic
kowtow
laissez faire
lexicon
loquacious |
lugubrious
metamorphosis
mitosis
moiety
nanotechnology
nihilism
nomenclature
nonsectarian
notarize
obsequious
oligarchy
omnipotent
orthography
oxidize
parabola
paradigm
parameter
pecuniary
photosynthesis
plagiarize
plasma
polymer
precipitous
quasar
quotidian |
recapitulate
reciprocal
reparation
respiration
sanguine
soliloquy
subjugate
suffragist
supercilious
tautology
taxonomy
tectonic
tempestuous
thermodynamics
totalitarian
unctuous
usurp
vacuous
vehement
vortex
winnow
wrought
xenophobe
yeoman
ziggurat |
So, yeah... I suppose their premise is fundamentally sound; I mean most of these are basically "SAT words," the type you're supposed to study and know to do well on that ubiquitous (not a word on the list!) test that US colleges consult while considering if they'll admit you to their august halls, but there's a reason most high school students study furiously for the SAT. Because they don't know the words. My dad does SAT tutoring part time, and he reports that most of the kids he works with scored in the 1000 range (average), and are trying to improve, and that very few of them know more than a handful of the vocabulary words on the SAT.
One of the SAT's infamous features are the A is to B as X is to Y questions. Things like, "Sheep are to Flock, as Fish are to ________." That one's easy, and of course the SAT uses far less common words, but you can see the trouble you'd be in trying to answer that sort of thing if you didn't know all the words in the example, and at least most of the words offered for multiple choice answers. Kids these days (and adults too, quite often) simply do not read, or if they do it's nothing but gossip blogs, myspace pages, LOLcats, and other stuff that does nothing to boost your vocabulary. Go google "ur site:myspace.com" vs. "quotidian site:myspace.com" and see where that gets you.
I wanted to play along though, so I read the whole list and wasn't too displeased with my vocabulary. Here are the words I had on familiarity whatsoever with, along with their dictionary-provided definitions.
abjure -- to renounce upon oath.
abstemious -- marked by restraint esp. in the consumption of food or alcohol
moiety -- one of two equal parts; HALF
Upon looking them up, abjure and abstemious rang a mental bell, but I can't ever really hearing or reading the word "moiety." I was worried starting off too, since 3 or the first 4 I didn't know or wasn't real sure about. Maybe I just have a thing against A-words, since I was pretty solid on most of the rest of the first column.
Other than these three, there were another 8 or 10 that I was familiar enough with to understand/remember if I saw them in a sentence, but that I didn't know well enough to write a definition of. Abrogate, gamete, jejune, orthography, pecuniary, and supercilious, for example. I looked them up to be sure, and yeah, I was kind of close on all of them. I knew abrogate was something to do with official abolition of a law. Gamete was some part of the fundamental properties of human reproduction/chromosomes. Jejune is an adjective used to insult stupid things. Orthography has something to do with the study of words and language. Pecuniary a word used when talking about bankers or finance. Supercilious I thought meant irrelevant or unnecessary, but the definition is "coolly and patronizingly haughty" which makes sense. I had the meaning backwards. A supercilious nature is generally expressed by treating other people/things are irrelevant and useless.
Give the list a read and try it yourself. You might learn something, but don't worry; you can always spend an hour later mainlining on Perez Hilton and sports forums and burn away the outer layer of your hippocampus, thus returning you to your former monosyllabic state.
Labels: language
