# Test your vocabulary.



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Try this

http://testyourvocab.com/

From another site I use. The poster there commented:



> Step 1 screens for the difficulty of step 2.
> 
> If you don't know any in step 1 and know all in step 2 you get a score of 80.
> 
> ...


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I got 42,700

Surprised me. Some of the words in the third column especially, were a bit rarefied.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Taggart said:


> I got 42,700
> 
> Surprised me. Some of the words in the third column especially, were a bit rarefied.


Well done, IT expert spouse! :tiphat:
I, the retired English teacher, scored 41,000 words...


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

39,100.

Oh dear.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

seeing words in the third column motivated me to learn them and expand my vocabulary. interesting test and curious statistics about natives and non-natives. thanks for sharing

yeah, by the way 26,700. non-native


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Ingélou said:


> Well done, IT expert spouse! :tiphat:
> I, the retired English teacher, scored 41,000 words...


Frown not: I, the _current_ English teacher, topped out at 39,900!

I am constrained to postulate that a mere smidgen of context would have burgeoned our evaluations exponentially, I warrant.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Well, look who's the native English-speaking dunce so far 

36,000 words 

I was strict about not ticking words which I recognised but couldn't quite define though.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Guess I am a dunce. With a Master's degree I only got 20,300 word estimated vocabulary.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Err... 41,000. Not bad for a retired scientist.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Florestan said:


> Guess I am a dunce. With a Master's degree I only got 20,300 word estimated vocabulary.


Oh, don't worry - it absolutely depends on culture and environment. I thought some of the words were *very weird indeed*, and not only the long ones. I *was* careful only to tick words I did know the meaning of - but some of those 'weird' words I'd only come across in non-mainstream contexts, almost as a matter of chance.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Ingélou said:


> Oh, don't worry - it absolutely depends on culture and environment. I thought some of the words were *very weird indeed*, and not only the long ones. I *was* careful only to tick words I did know the meaning of - but some of those 'weird' words I'd only come across in non-mainstream contexts, almost as a matter of chance.


There were some words I could have guessed at. Many words we think we know from context, if pressed to actually define, we would have to scratch our heads.

So, my daughter who is in college (undergrad) only got 18,600.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Florestan said:


> Guess I am a dunce. With a Master's degree I only got 20,300 word estimated vocabulary.


No reason to get hung up, I think. My feeling is a lot of the words are not representative of the whole English language. I believe a lot of the less common words in the test were more literary terms than technical. I read a lot of technical papers and stuff, and my degree is in engineering, but only read maybe 10-15 novels in my entire life, so my score is not so great at 23,300.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I only got 13,700...Lots of strange words there


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

25,600
Second language, but almost 30 years of work experience in a multinational company, having had bosses from the UK, USA and India (among others), and almost 4 years living in Singapore.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

20,300 words here, as a non-native. I guess I can read English much better than I can either speak or write it.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

I got 27,800. I remember when I was visiting the UK, and found myself in the company where there happened to be another Finnish person present, and we got to talking about English skills. One person commented - "She's fluent, but he's got a large vocabulary!", after I used the word "dilapidated" to describe the house where I was staying in.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

33,700

Not bad for being 20 and still having so much more to read and experience.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> No reason to get hung up, I think. My feeling is a lot of the words are not representative of the whole English language. I believe a lot of the less common words in the test were more literary terms than technical. I read a lot of technical papers and stuff, and my degree is in engineering, but only read maybe 10-15 novels in my entire life, so my score is not so great at 23,300.


In my opinion, you are exactly right about the _provenance_ of some of the more _erudite_ and _sesquipedalian_ terminology. Yes, I, in picking through the wreckage of my shattered lexical self-confidence, am showing off, and am heartened to note that the spellcheck, though it handles "spellcheck" with _aplomb_, is _dumbfounded_ by sesquipedalian ("I fart in your general direction! You mother was a hamster, and you father smelt of elderberries, Monsieur Spellchecker!")

And yes, the infallible marker of vocabulary excellence lies in knowing that "eriudite" and "mischievious" are damnable barbarisms. I mean it.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Florestan said:


> Guess I am a dunce. With a Master's degree I only got 20,300 word estimated vocabulary.


Yikes, I took it again (skipping the last "research" page so as not to skew their results) and got a lower score: 19,200!

I am falling off the dunce stool! :lol:


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Florestan said:


> Yikes, I took it again (skipping the last "research" page so as not to skew their results) and got a lower score: 19,200!
> 
> I am falling off the dunce stool! :lol:


If the vocabulary chosen is somewhat on the 'literary' side, which is my impression, then those with a large scientific vocabulary are not going to do themselves justice. So how accurate can the methodology be? 
Possibly it was simply designed to torment us!


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## ldiat (Jan 27, 2016)

i scoered 100,000...... i stoped and then louked up the words on google.......hey 100%.....:devil:KIDDING


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

2,250 but I said I was born in 1917
and I speak Ozstralian as my first language......................................................​
​


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> 2,250 but I said I was born in 1917
> and I speak Ozstralian as my first language......................................................​
> ​


joke of the day! :lol:

and what a coincidence we spoke about Oztralians today


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

There were some scientific terms in the set (like "parsimonious") - maybe just not too many.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Xaltotun said:


> There were some scientific terms in the set (like "parsimonious") - maybe just not too many.


I don't get that as being a scientific term, but maybe Merriman Webster doesn't show that definition?:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parsimonious


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

27,500, I guess I'm just a wee one.


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## Guest (Jul 4, 2017)

40,800. There were about 8-10 that I have _never _seen nor heard of!


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## Jacred (Jan 14, 2017)

27000. I've been told to read more fiction (I prefer non-fiction).


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Florestan said:


> I don't get that as being a scientific term, but maybe Merriman Webster doesn't show that definition?:
> 
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parsimonious


It's used in biology when family trees of organisms are being constructed. And I'd guess it's also used in philosophy of science.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

21,500, just finished 10th grade so I won't go crazy over it. lots of those words were pretty odd, though there were so many I recognized but didn't let myself check because I couldn't think of a definition.

Anyone else get excited at 'leitmotiv'? :lol:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Minor Sixthist said:


> 21,500, just finished 10th grade so I won't go crazy over it. lots of those words were pretty odd, though there were so many I recognized but didn't let myself check because I couldn't think of a definition.
> 
> Anyone else get excited at 'leitmotiv'? :lol:


I effectively skipped (either didn't pay attention or cut classes) 10th throught 12th grade, so that may be part of my problem. I always took the dummy English classes in high school. Had a 10th grade English class where a kid brought in a Cheech and Chong album and the teacher let us listen to it for class. Crazy!


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

Florestan said:


> I effectively skipped (either didn't pay attention or cut classes) 10th throught 12th grade, so that may be part of my problem. I always took the dummy English classes in high school. Had a 10th grade English class where a kid brought in a Cheech and Chong album and the teacher let us listen to it for class. Crazy!


The entirety of my school's English department happens to be super tight. All constantly have poles in their keasters. So there isn't lots of messing around in those classes, but the AP psych teacher is effectively insane. By December all he'll do is tell crazy stories all period about his high school career, or show us videos of Milli Vanillini, Lionel Richie, Pink Floyd, and Inception, which in all cases he somehow related to psych... he convinced us he was the supreme overlord of the world as well as a trained Jedi knight.

The music teacher is a hobbit. Short, unbecoming, and insufferably annoying.

Still better than English. _Great Expectations_ was the worst piece of 'literature' I'm likely to ever read.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

^ I didn't gain much of an appreciation for literary analysis until we read James Joyce's Dubliners in 12th grade AP Lit. A combination of the interesting material and the way my teacher presented (you could tell she really understood it and loved it) completely changed my attitude toward literature. Without that class I doubt I'd be such an avid reader today 

Also, here's another vocabulary test:

http://vocabulary.ugent.be/

This one tests your ability to identify fake words.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

Tristan said:


> ^ I didn't gain much of an appreciation for literary analysis until we read James Joyce's Dubliners in 12th grade AP Lit. A combination of the interesting material and the way my teacher presented (you could tell she really understood it and loved it) completely changed my attitude toward literature. Without that class I doubt I'd be such an avid reader today
> 
> Also, here's another vocabulary test:
> 
> ...


Cool, that book is on my shelf at home! It has been for a while. It came from either my mom or grandma...maybe both. I wouldnt be surprised if my Irish gram were interested in some Irish literature  Maybe I'll give it a try.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

Tristan said:


> ^ I didn't gain much of an appreciation for literary analysis until we read James Joyce's Dubliners in 12th grade AP Lit. A combination of the interesting material and the way my teacher presented (you could tell she really understood it and loved it) completely changed my attitude toward literature. Without that class I doubt I'd be such an avid reader today
> 
> Also, here's another vocabulary test:
> 
> ...


Cool quiz. I responded 'yes' to 70% of the real words and to 0% of the fake ones.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Tristan said:


> ^ I didn't gain much of an appreciation for literary analysis until we read James Joyce's Dubliners in 12th grade AP Lit. A combination of the interesting material and the way my teacher presented (you could tell she really understood it and loved it) completely changed my attitude toward literature. Without that class I doubt I'd be such an avid reader today
> 
> Also, here's another vocabulary test:
> 
> ...


Hey, I did pretty good: "On the basis of your results, we estimate you know 76% of the English words."

I was very cautious preferring to say no to a word that might be real English than to say yes to a fake word and it shows here:

"You said yes to 76% of the existing words. You said yes to 0% of the nonwords."


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

I got 80% on that one. I got 83% of the real words, but had to subtract 3% because I said yes to "halflet". I have no idea why I thought that was real. lol.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

90% Yes - mostly missed out on agent nouns because they can be sticky. Said yes to 0% of the fakes.

Spelling was a problem on some of them.

Some of the non-words were tricky because they were variants of real words. I suspect you crossed over between haslet - British meatloaf and halfing or hobbit and thought it looked right.

That's what makes it a great quiz!

Glad to see you liked Joyce. I did The Portrait of the Artist when I was at school. (Many years ago). As it was a Jesuit school, we knew most of what he was writing about at first hand - including the sermon on Hell!


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

80% yes (should have been a bit higher because directly after I pressed F I realized I knew lorikeet), no penalty for wrong words.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Tristan said:


> ^ I didn't gain much of an appreciation for literary analysis until we read James Joyce's Dubliners in 12th grade AP Lit. A combination of the interesting material and the way my teacher presented (you could tell she really understood it and loved it) completely changed my attitude toward literature. Without that class I doubt I'd be such an avid reader today
> 
> Also, here's another vocabulary test:
> 
> ...


Good fun!

"We estimate you know 91% of the English words"

I must try to work "lagniappe" into a conversation now that I have been made aware of it.

Can't think how I managed without it.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Taggart said:


> 90% Yes - mostly missed out on agent nouns because they can be sticky. Said yes to 0% of the fakes.
> 
> Spelling was a problem on some of them.
> 
> ...


Well, spouse, you'll be pleased to know that you 'beat me' again. 
('Have you stopped beating your wife?!?')

I scored 89% with a 3% penalty for wrong words, so 86%.

Great quiz, Tristan - thanks! :tiphat:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Tristan said:


> I got 80% on that one. I got 83% of the real words, but had to subtract 3% because I said yes to "halflet". I have no idea why I thought that was real. lol.


Halflet is the opposite of twins, no?


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

84% - 0% = 84% ja muutama sana tähän suomeksi että vähimmäispituusehto täyttyy.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

I got a perfect 100%, gotta try harder on that


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

ST4 said:


> I got a perfect 100%, gotta try harder on that


Show off, to be in my team you gotta get below 3000 Words........


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## ROBOT (Jul 17, 2017)

Hello， 6380！ It's lovely meeting you。


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## Crystal (Aug 8, 2017)

5,090 words  12 years old, second language


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Crystal said:


> 5,090 words  12 years old, second language


You still beat me


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