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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?

#341

Reading through the comments, I've noticed you can tell the native speakers by their scores in the word categories. A native speaker will score 20/20 in the first two bands and progressively less in the following ones. For those who have learned English as a foreign language, the scores are more evenly distributed. So it's not uncommon to see a native English speaker totaling 90 as 20,20,19,17,14, and a foreigner rea…

Not a native speaker and my scores are 20, 19, 19, 20 and 15 for a total of 93.

Maybe I should consider myself as one :)

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

#343
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also doesn't get hard enough Oh come on! Like you really knew what "Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia" is?

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

The real question is, do you know what it means?

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

#344

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…

> what high schooler doesn't learn about kinetic energy?

95% of Americans.

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

#346

In addition to everything everyone else has said: their math is off by half (or 100%, depending on how you count), due to a structural error. (context: native English speaker, big reader, huge nerd, perfect SAT score) I got all 100 correct on the first try without looking anything up! Confusingly, that only resulted in a "SCIENTIFIC ESTIMATE" that I know 85,000/~170,000 words? Their "How is this calculated" page that…

It was clearly built with AI.

Is this a problem? I thought it was fun, personally, even if the author used AI to help build it.

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

#347

In addition to everything everyone else has said: their math is off by half (or 100%, depending on how you count), due to a structural error. (context: native English speaker, big reader, huge nerd, perfect SAT score) I got all 100 correct on the first try without looking anything up! Confusingly, that only resulted in a "SCIENTIFIC ESTIMATE" that I know 85,000/~170,000 words? Their "How is this calculated" page that…

What background you all have that contributed you think to scoring 100

I read a lot, and have since I was a child

edit: also, native English (well, American) speaker

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

#348

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…

I'll contest a few of these, which I thought were good.

Breviary: this was, to me, known and not uncommon. It's widely known to Catholics, but also, if you have an interest in medieval art or books, you'd likely know it too. It was one of the main types of books before the invention of the printing press. Think of an image from an illuminated manuscript, 50% chance it's from one.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: it's not that you're expected to know the whole word, but they're looking for you to recognize components of it and infer the meaning from that. I knew sesquippedalian (sometimes jokingly used in "long word" contexts) so that was easy: but phobia is also easily identifiable, and hippo, from the latin root, I knew was not as obvious as the animal, but probably something like "large" (clue: the Hippodrome). So you could, even knowing only "phobia" and being able to guess "hippo", have a good basis for your choice.

Complacent and gauche: have heard both these uses, I think that's straightforwardly correct. If this was a dictionary that would, at worst, be the 2nd or 3rd definition. No complaints.

Source: I used to place in spelling bees and could've been a contender but I didn't have the discipline to study the dictionary for hours on the weekends, which is the next level.

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

#350

In addition to everything everyone else has said: their math is off by half (or 100%, depending on how you count), due to a structural error. (context: native English speaker, big reader, huge nerd, perfect SAT score) I got all 100 correct on the first try without looking anything up! Confusingly, that only resulted in a "SCIENTIFIC ESTIMATE" that I know 85,000/~170,000 words? Their "How is this calculated" page that…

What background you all have that contributed you think to scoring 100

I missed two, but I’m willing to be tthey’re similar to me - I read a lot and whenever I encounter a new word I don’t know, I usually look up its etymology.
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