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How many of the 170k English words do you know?

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Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#411

Post by kurthr »

trebligdivad wrote: post #337
brianleb wrote: post #263

As others have pointed out, too many clicks per word. I am a sucker for a 'how many words do you know' quiz so I finished anyway. Overall I'm skeptical of the classifications. In broad strokes, the early words are easier and the latter words are more challenging, but the middle is pretty muddied. Some of the words chosen are rather absurd/inappropriate: breviary (which I got wrong but felt like a vaguely religious wo…

Yeh, it had 'kerfuffle' as one of the last words but that's very common. Yet it had Zenzizenzizenzic (which I'd never heard of but I think I guessed it right) It really could do with a summary showing the answers you made and corrections for what you got wrong.

Yep, 'panacea' was grandmaster, but 'quire' was intermediate?

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#412

Post by over190bpm »

I could actually get almost all of the last third correctly by choosing the option that's the longest, has a semicolon, or a coma.

Aside from that, I didn't like that most of the words only had one or at most two definitions that sounded viable.

A lot of these words have either Latin or Greek origins, for most questions you can deduce the correct answer by asking the question: "Which of these would make sense to develop into a separate word through the mostly non-modern history of the language?".

I would enjoy it way more if all four options sounded equally viable, and I couldn't deduce the correct answer without actually being sure about the meaning of the word. I understand that coming up with choices like that for each question is way harder if you actually validate all of them manually.

I got a score of 76000 best estimate with 85 being correct, even though English is not my native language and I'm not that good at it.

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#413

Post by alok-g »

testemailfordg2 wrote: post #409

Gave it a try and got 78 correct out of 100, so it extrapolated it to me knowing about 55k+ words and saying most native speakers only get 15k - 35k...Interesting

Mine was very similar.

Given this ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48603397 ... I now wonder if the actual corrected estimate from it is even higher at 110K+, which would seem further off.

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#414

Post by fl4regun »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #217
fl4regun wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word was "Brobdingnagian", which apparently means "giant", from the book, Brobdingnag, published in the 1700s . I know all of the words you listed, even if I don't know t he books they came from, on the other hand, I've never heard anyone use "Brobdingnagian" and I've never heard of the book it came from either.

I don't know that one, but I do know gargantuan, and pantagruelian, which come from a 17th century novel by Rabelais as well as yahoo and Lilliputian, which come from a 1726 novel by Swift.

gargantuan and yahoo are common parlance, people actually use these, in spite of them not knowing their origin. When's the last time you've seen those written down, or spoken, anywhere aside from those nearly half millennia old books? I've never seen those.

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#417

Post by Animats »

78,500.

The very first one was "Unique". I wondered if "the only one of its kind" was still the correct answer, having seen "very unique" used all too often recently. They accept "only one of its kind".

Missed "hegemony" (wasn't sure a hegemony had a leader), "quotidian" (should have known that, seen it before), "ultracrepedarian" (new word to me), "absquatulate" (19th century slang), and "fartlek" (Swedish interval training).

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#419

Post by Animats »

NopIdoN wrote: post #241
shdon wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that one was pretty well known. But then, I can also rattle off Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch at will.

But why? say what you like about antidisestablishmentarianism; at least it's an ethos

That's round 2 of England's established church problems. Not as bad as round 1, where the Catholic church was violently disestablished by Henry VIII so he could divorce his wife. Cromwell told the Catholics they could go "to hell or to Carna". I've been to Carna. It's bleak.

It's hard to disestablish a religion. Too many people believe. In Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church came back after Communism went down. Now Putin uses it to reinforce his rule.

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