Your vocabulary

How would you rate your own vocabulary?

  • Indubitably sesquipedalian.

    Votes: 23 16.3%
  • More linguistically adroit than my peers.

    Votes: 104 73.8%
  • Roughly comparable to that of the average speaker/writer.

    Votes: 12 8.5%
  • Not so great. I miss a lot of words that people use.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Ungh. Button good. My am no have word stuff.

    Votes: 2 1.4%

OK, I am apparetently an illtierate moron, incapable of exceeding a repulsive score of 3!!! Yep; I got 3/10. Bow down before my semiscience.
 

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Goblyn said:
But ... what is the point of insulting them then?
The same point as any other time, to please yourself while suspending common sense with the notion that you can change anyone? This way you get the added kicker of feeling clever.

If you're going to insult someone to some sort of productive end though, I generally find that balling up a fist (or whatever other actually harmful things you can manufacture for them) and smacking them is quickest and produces better results. I mean, it's not like I haven't made grown men cry from telling them off, but it took a lot more time that I could have better spent just laying into their gonads with a bat or something for all the long term good it did. It's only really good for being able to note as an interesting story of "Why you should never ask me why I don't like you."
 

I got 4 out of 10 but honestly, I didn't really know any of those words. Whether or not you know the definitions of some random words doesn't an accurate test make. I'd like to think that my vocab is pretty decent but obviously it didn't help me on that test.
 


8/10 on the quiz (missed fiacre and killick) and I agree that this quiz is not a real test of one's vocabulary.

I think my "known vocabulary" is larger than the average person's, because of all the reading I do. However, as others have said, when I speak or write I rarely use any out of the ordinary words as I want the reader or listener to understand me! ;)
 

Marchen said:
Generally I don't see a need to speak or write in such a manner. I suppose if you are trying to impress...but even then it just comes off as pretentious.
Granted, generally, there isn't a need to use sophisticated language, but then again, there isn't usually a need to use "language" at all. Pointing and grunting will accomplish more than people give it credit for. Unfortunately, it isn't always very pleasant, and it's rarely beautiful.

English has far more words than any other language, living or dead, but its speakers know so few of them, that we might as well not have more than a few. Why have language at all if you refuse to do more than grunt and point. This is becoming a rant, so I know that I should stop, but I love my language and I want to be as proud of those who speak it as I am of the language itself. Most native English speakers only speak English. We express ourselves with a fraction of just one language, while the rest of the world speaks their own languages and English as well.

EDIT: Yes, I understand that the quiz I posted the link to is not a very good measure of a person's general, working vocabulary, as most of the terms there are highly specialized, but the absurd difficulty of it made it more interesting, I thought, than, say Reader's Digest's "Word Power." Moreover, I thought that I would link to it as it is what got me thinking on the subject and prompted me to start this thread in the first place.
 
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In case it matters, I didn't guess on any of the ones I got. Esker I got because of reading about places like Iceland and Finland for character concepts!
 


8/10 for me.

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