(no subject)

[andrewducker]

Apparently my vocabulary is around 36,000 words.

Test yours here

[Poll #1763274]

Sadly, LJ only allows 20 entries in a scale - so if you were under 25, say 25, and if you were over 45 then say 45.

Comments

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Did you find RPGs boosted it - e.g. legerdemain relates to cantrip, sleight of hand?

[andrewducker]

Indeedy. Seems to be a common thing on my journal. See, also, Caitiff :->

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

As in Vampire RPG sireless bastard?

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Absolutely - 'oneriomancy' and 'tatterdemalion' I know from Changeling, and there were others I've forgotten that I got from LARPing.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

39,500 to be precise. Amusingly, one of the more obscure words I knew a single definition to game from RPGs "caitiff".

37,500

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

You have two data points for RPGs improving vocabulary.

Reading Gene Wolfe and H.L. Mencken probably helped my.

Re: 37,500

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Mencken FTW

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

38,200. I'd have had more, but I saw some words I recognised but could no longer remember the definition... I would've scored higher if the words were used in context.

-- Steve wonders if any of the words listed are "mines"; not actual words in the OED inserted to trap those who just tick everything.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Suspect my score influenced by reading the reviews of John Clute. (Clerisy, hypnopompic, adumbrated...)

[pr1ss.livejournal.com]

35,600 It's fast company here in the Ducker journal. Some of the words there, (pother) I've only seen used by British authors.

[laplor.livejournal.com]

34.4k

[fearmeforiampink]

36,500

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

A while ago I made a similar test. I decided to count how many word definitions you know. One of the questions was a definition of the word "reach"... on a wagon. Apparently it's something that reaches to the back wagon wheels.

I actually tested this too. But I used an old dictionary, and I see a lot of archaic words on this, and not too much newspeak.

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

They used to teach us what we considered to be obscure words at school in lists every week. I read on from there. RPGs? Tick. I don't read as much as I would like now, due to insane working hours.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

There were lots of words I recognised and would know in context but was unable to summon up a definition for.

[andrewducker]

Same here. A few of them I said "The definition is X." and then checked to see if I was right. Some I was, some I wasn't. I'd have had more right answers with more context.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I wonder how they are vouching their results.

[andrewducker]

I'd do it by having a sample of people where I knew their total vocabulary, and then seeing what the correlation between that and knowing a subset of it was.

Alternatively, grade words into different groups, where knowing a few of them made it likely that you'd know all of the other ones in the same group.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

There were several I knew from RPGs and others I recognised but couldn't really say I knew a definition of, although like others, I'd probably have managed if I had a context for them.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

I am not very convinced by this. I'm a scientist, a roleplayer, I've studied several languages including Latin and Classical Greek, and I read constantly, including fantasy, I had a reading age of around 15 when I was 8 -- and yet apparently I was below the median (~27k). Half of Americans supposedly know more words than I do! I detect some bias here...

My wife Jules, who has a degree in librarianship and has single handedly won pub quizzes did better, but is still below anyone else here.

On the other hand, after a night of doing word tests (take a look at Free Rice), I returned to the test and found my score jumped considerably (I think that the test is quite sensitive to the first section).