Fun idea, I've been wanting to create something similar to track which vocab words I have mastered. Two nits: (1) no need for a "check" button as other commenters have noted and (2) the UI jitters a bit when submitting answers for each question - it's a bit disorienting!
How many of the 170k English words do you know?
191–200 of 575 posts
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#192The words clearly are not random. I don't know how the author chose the word bank, but it's not a representative sample. It's all fairly common words and then intentionally silly words that are very long (Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia), that wouldn't really appear from a random sample as frequently as they do. I tested myself from my own Webster's collegiate dictionary some years ago with actually random words and the results were way off compared to this.
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#19376250, or 93/100. Native English speaker from London. Some of the last 10 words were seriously obscure. Are accoutrement and ziggurat really English words? Accoutrement is even pronounced as French!
Weirdly enough, these words would be known to some non-native speakers as they show up every now and then in video games.
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#19470k, which I believe is a fine result for a second language.
Good work. I was slightly below that as a native speaker with 88 correct.
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#195It's hilarious that most of these words are French
English has this weird dichotomy where most of the words in a typical sentence are Germanic, while most of the words in the dictionary are French. Fun fact: according to a quick count by AI using web search, the previous sentence contains 21 words of Germanic origin, 2 of Latin origin, 2 of Greek origin and 1 of French origin. Also the etymology of the word Germanic is Latin, while that of the word French is Germanic
Yes, English is a post-Hastings collision between Norman French and Anglo Saxon.
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#196That was fun. Bit confused by the result because it says I was "wow are you stephen fry?" Which I assume meant I did decent. (72K). But then below it said "you are a man of few words". I take it the latter is just because I've only done the test once? But it's mixed messaging on first attempt I think.
Combined with the factoid it features under "how is this calculated": However, most native speakers have an active vocabulary between 15,000 and 35,000 words. We must be geniuses, lol.
You are almost always going to find people with above average reading and writing skills on an online forum - especially one with such "curated" audience and spartan UI.
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"
Seems to be a hapax legomenon
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/xylopolist_n
"OED's only evidence for xylopolist is from 1656, in the writing of Thomas Blount, antiquary and lexicographer."
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#19843000.. It says I am a person of few words, and albeit true, I actually thought I did well... Until to started doing some crazy words...
It told me to read the dictionary.
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"
Seems to be a hapax legomenon https://www.oed.com/dictionary/xylopolist_n "OED's only evidence for xylopolist is from 1656, in the writing of Thomas Blount, antiquary and lexicographer."
That test had several hapax legomena on it, so it would make sense.
Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?
#200Seems too easy compared to the other tests like that I I've taken (my wife and I have a mini thing about this cause as in immigrant I'm not legally allowed to win at Scrabble but I do occasionally), I got 3 wrong and guessed maybe 3 more correctly without knowing them (vibe based i was usually between the two), getting 77k. That seems improbable... Also kinda lazy with many expert words where the longest definition is correct more often than not.