I didn't see any science-related words when I took the test. Not sure if this is because of the process by which they made the word lists, or because there truly are not many common science-related words.
Estimate your English vocabulary size
81–90 of 331 posts
Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
The word was actually "sparge," a word that any home-brewers have likely come across.
Ah, that's why dictionary.com didn't know what "splarge" meant. Apparently "sparge" is a sprinkling - why would home brewers know this? Genuinely curious here.
Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#83Some of these don't look like real words (e.g. splarge, which is definitely something that you could make up). I assume they're real, though. Anyway, my score: http://testyourvocab.com/?r=36192
The word was actually "sparge," a word that any home-brewers have likely come across.
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Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#84lots of people here are saying they scored lower than what they expected, and that maybe other people cheated. that could be it, but it could also be that hacker news folks tend to be overconfident. this would match the stereotype of this group being mainly male nerd entreprenuers, which could score worse on things like this but perceive themselves to score much higher (a feeling not a fact backed by studies that i c…
I doubt that many people are cheating, but the "percentiles" are basically meaningless because the survey obviously self-selects for 1) people who are on the Internet, 2) people who are on Internet sites where this survey will get reposted 2) people who suspect they have pretty good vocabularies (who is going to take a non-mandatory 'test' that doesn't even earn them any Facebook Credits to inform them they aren't so bright), etc.
End result: substantial inflation of scores relative to what you'd see if you gave the same survey to the general population (and assuming everyone is relatively honest).
Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#8522,000 Clearly my American public school education has served me well. >_<
No one getting high scores did so because of or despite their education. They did it by having the sort of brain that happens to retains words like uxoricide and reading copious quantities of material in which such abstruse words are employed.
I got a high score and went to public schools in the US, and didn't finish college either.
Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#86Most interesting to me were the words I recognized, but weren't sure of their meaning (e.g. malapropism, which turned out to mean ludicrous misuse of a word).
BTW: a nice thing about online dictionaries is they have sound files for pronunciation. e.g. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/malapropism With a plugin, you can highlight and right-click to open in another tab.
Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#87I got 37,300. They claim this is not quite 95th percentile, which I am a tad skeptical accurately represents my vocabulary-size percentile relative to the general population. Perhaps this survey is being forwarded around unusually literate people at the top end, or more than 5% of responders are cheating. Where are the fake words to catch cheaters? I Googled a lot of what I didn't recognize, and everything I checked…
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Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#88Shocking, 9885. I acquired current command on English via Internet, Harry Potter and Klan Academy - and I was pretty comfortable making points in English than in Japanese
I could use some help boosting my vocabulary...
Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#89For those of you concerned with your score, you are deovting an undue amount of your time in discussing the results of what is—let's be honest with ourselves—the literati version of a "Are U A Vampire Or A Werewolf?" quiz.
P.S., 36,700 .. I took this before it got a lot of general circulation, and my standings have improved considerably. I suspect this makes me more worthy of oxygen.
Re: Estimate your English vocabulary size
#90I got 19 800. As a Swedish non-native speaker I thought it was OK. The test needs to also show the averages for non-natives and natives separate.