The most eville vocabulary test ever

[michiruwater]

39,300.

[danceronice]

38,600. (I wonder which version of SAT scoring they're using or if they adjust the program based on your year of birth. I had a 770, but that was before they changed the totals and scoring system. Actually the only section of the PSATs, SAT, SAT IIs or GRES where I got below 700 in anything was math/quantitative...but I don't know what they'd be under the way they're scored now.)

I knew more than I expected I would...some I now have to look up as I'm curious! And amazing how many of the really weird ones you know when you're a big Edward Gorey fan.

[Matryeshka]

Never underestimate the power of reading ABL (anything but li-chra-chure). My score is high because of a reading diet of urban fantasy and anything with gratuitous sex scenes and/or werewolves. I do not jest. Read a decent--doesn't even have to be particularly good--modern urban fantasy novel. I knew vibrissae because of a really bad mystery urban fantasy series I read a long time ago. The killer, a shapeshifter, was caught because of odd vibrissae found at the crime scene.

[martian_girl]

30,000

[Prancer]

Never underestimate the power of reading ABL (anything but li-chra-chure). My score is high because of a reading diet of urban fantasy and anything with gratuitous sex scenes and/or werewolves. I do not jest. Read a decent--doesn't even have to be particularly good--modern urban fantasy novel. I knew vibrissae because of a really bad mystery urban fantasy series I read a long time ago. The killer, a shapeshifter, was caught because of odd vibrissae found at the crime scene.

I find historical romances to be a great source for WWF.

41,800, although I did cheat on a couple of things like uxoricide. I didn't know the word, but I was sure I knew what it meant.

[Kasey]

41,300. I'll credit reading Rex Stout as a teen and young adult

[skateboy]

23,200. Damn, I don't know nuttin' 'bout nuttin'.

[maatTheViking]

20500 - lower than I expected actually. I got a lot of word from being a role player .lots of words I didn't know though!

I was in doubt as to to reply to the non-native speaker demographics. I did study English, but took an International Baccalaureate for high school, and half my subjects in uni was in English, 80% had English (American) text books. And I lived in the US for 7 years...

Funny that I realised that I didn't learn tat any words from all my text books, fiction is a much better source than non-fiction!

[Zemgirl]

Never underestimate the power of reading ABL (anything but li-chra-chure). My score is high because of a reading diet of urban fantasy and anything with gratuitous sex scenes and/or werewolves. I do not jest. Read a decent--doesn't even have to be particularly good--modern urban fantasy novel. I knew vibrissae because of a really bad mystery urban fantasy series I read a long time ago. The killer, a shapeshifter, was caught because of odd vibrissae found at the crime scene.

I agree - other than the awful last column, my romance reading proved quite helpful. I think Loretta Chase alone must have used half of the more difficult words in her books

I was in doubt as to to reply to the non-native speaker demographics. I did study English, but took an International Baccalaureate for high school, and half my subjects in uni was in English, 80% had English (American) text books. And I lived in the US for 7 years...

I wasn't sure either. English is technically not my native language, but I learned to speak it at a young age, lived in the US for several years, and almost everything I read is in English. So I said it's my native language. Also because it meant answering fewer personal questions.

[maatTheViking]

For fluent non-native speakers, which looks like most of the non-native speakers here, it would be interesting to see how it correlates to the vocabulary in their native tongue. For instance, in both Danish and English my writing skills are adequate, but not great. I tend to be repetitive in my word choice, and ramble too much.

I wonder if vocabulary also has parallels once you get over the 'learner' stage (as their average user is in given the vocabulary. 3000 words would be a good bet for my German vocabulary, for instance )


It also surprised me they didn't ask for you education level - usually that is a good indicator too, I thought?

[pingu]

10.400!!! Wow!

[kwanfan1818]

34,100, but, then again, I hopeless with languages.

[Citlali]

27,200 and english is not my first language.

Last time I took an english class: 15 years since I finished highschool.

[Prancer]

It also surprised me they didn't ask for you education level - usually that is a good indicator too, I thought?

It did ask me .

[Spiralgraph]

I got 32,300. Some of those words are ridiculously obscure. Almost as bad as the Free Rice site can be.

[Aceon6]

33,800 and I was quite conservative in selecting the words from the column on the far right.

[pat c]

I got 34,100 and I knew a lot of the words but if I wasn't completely positive of more than one definition I left it blank.

Neat quiz.

[CynicElle]

37,600. There were a couple I probably could have figured out by breaking down word roots, but I left them blank.

[cruisin]

Has anyone here ever played a game called Fictionary? You take turns being the "reader". You choose a word in the dictionary, which you think no one will know. You say and spell the word. Then the other players make up a definition for the word - trying to make it sound real. Then the "reader" reads all of the player's definitions and the real definition. You get a point for guessing the right answer in your definition, a point for guessing the correct read definition, a point for someone guessing your definition. It's fun! We played during the power outage. One of the players picked stylobate, not realizing all of the years of art history I had taken. They were rather surprised when they got my correct definition .

[zaphyre14]

39,200. It pays to read a lot of well-written historical fiction, I guess.