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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?

#141

Post by triceratops »

krustyburger wrote: post #91
apical_dendrite wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plenty of words and phrases originate from fiction quixotic, scrooge, shangri-la, Uncle Tom, gargantuan, kafkaesque, blurb, milquetoast and words like cyberspace were first used in fiction once real people use them, they stop being fictional words

Kafkaesque doesn’t originate directly from fiction like your other examples any more than a word like Dickensian does.

Well it does and it doesn't. It wouldn't be a word if Franz Kafka hadn't written any fiction. Same for Dickensian.

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

#142

Post by NateEag »

As a fluent native speaker who has read thousands of books and sometimes reads dictionary entries for fun, a number of these definitions are actually slightly off.

"Verbose," for instance, is defined as "Using more words than are needed."

That's not exactly wrong, but it's kind of misleading. "Verbose" explicitly means using a large pile of words, drowning the reader in far more words than are strictly necessary.

"More words than are needed" could be as limited as "used a three-word construction in a sentence where it could have been one."

There are many more like this.

Please, I beg all of you - don't use LLMs to generate linguistic slop that claims to be linguistic education.

I weep for the world that is to come.

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

#143

Post by Jordan-117 »

jcattle wrote: post #111

there's also https://www.myvocab.info/en From what I can tell they actually have a bit more robust science behind their algorithm (and a lot less questions to answer)

This one's much better. Shorter, faster, adapts to one's level, gives an out for being unsure, largely doesn't bother with definitions (except the occasional verification challenge), and even mixes in some fake words to ensure you're not BS-ing.

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

#144

Post by stavros »

walthamstow wrote: post #130
stavros wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on what you consider an "English" word, anywhere from 0% to 100% of words are English words. I've definitely seen accoutrement and ziggurat in English, and quite often.

Of course, the line is very blurry. I've used accoutrement(s) in English many times, but I've never considered myself to be speaking English when I use it. It's like joie de vivre or c'est la vie.

What about "rendezvous", or "etiquette", or "RSVP", cliche, nuance, etc? Do you consider those French or English?

As you say, the line is very very blurry.

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

#145

Post by steve_adams_86 »

egypturnash wrote: post #121

“You mastered 98 new words! THE VERDICT You are a person of few words, or perhaps just a mysterious one. Quite intriguing.” —- This sounds more like a cute assessment of only getting two words right. And what do you mean “new words”? It wasn’t until eighty-odd words in that I actually got a word I didn’t know and had to guess by ruling out multiple-choice options.

Nice work. I only got 90. It also summarized that as though I might learn English one day. Kind of an odd result. I’m not offended, just confused.

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

#147

Post by grey-area »

kubb wrote: post #97
naishoya wrote: post #79

"77,250words "Unbelievable. Are you actually Stephen Fry in disguise?" I do concur that a refined collection of incorrect proposed responses which includes selections among terms with semantic proximity, conflated synonyms and plausible morphology could refine the accuracy of evaluations; and if the test was intended to bestow authentic assessments of lexicographical capability this would in all probability become an…

Same here (72 750) but it doesn't feel right. I'm not a native speaker and I was able to guess some of them via elimination or cognates. I'd say I know 10 000 words tops.

You may know more words than you think, many are shared with French and other Romance languages, particularly the more esoteric ones (see what I did there?). Taking another recherché example: palimpsest - very similar in English, French, Greek.

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

#149

Post by pclmulqdq »

fittingopposite wrote: post #131
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I also got exactly 74k. Stuff like “xylologist” I guessed had to do with vegetation because of “xylem”, whereas xylophone player was too on the nose. Then again, maybe knowing xylem in the first place makes 74k reasonable.

Haha. Yeah I figured Xylo- (wood) + sth. related to mono-poly so wood-seller made sense. Never have heard of this word before

I think the test was vibe coded, because a xylologist is someone who studies wood, not someone who sells wood. I am not sure if "xylolgist" was the exact word, though.

xylo- = wood; -logy = study

Indeed from M-W: "a branch of dendrology dealing with the gross and the minute structure of wood"

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