My vocabulary ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

... is estimated at 43,000 words.  I have discovered that, if I don't know a word, it is unlikely to be in the dictionary.  I like being able to search online, where I can usually find a definition somewhere.

Comments

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Dang, 38 for me. :) Obviously, I'm not reading the fun stuff as much as I used to - I rarely run across a word I don't know.

Try this...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

If you're not already reading haikujaguar and Alan Dean Foster, try those. They average one new word per book for me, and they're the only people I can think of off the top of my head who do.

Re: Try this...

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

Day-um. I was pleased with my 36000!

Re: Try this...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that both my parents are teachers, I grew up in a house full of books, I read just about anything including encyclopedias, and I'm linguistic silly-putty.

Seriously, last night we went to a German restaurant, and there was a wall plaque with a couple dozen or so food words in German. I knew most of them -- and that's in a language I tend to avoid. I saw the plaque and I couldn't not read it to see how well I'd do.

Re: Try this...

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

Check (one parent, three aunts), check, check... slightly less check.

I shall feel slightly inadequate anyway. :-)

Re: Try this...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Of course, the more you read of my writing, the more of my words will become your words. Once in a while I'll do a poem that is crammed with unusual words, or about one unusual word. And when I write sestinas, I usually pick five versatile end-words and one exotic end-word.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

35,600 here. Looks like I need to hit up the Alan Dean Foster, too.

I was just talking with skellington1 the other day about how in High School English class, we were supposed to come up with 5 new words every week to add to our vocabulary. I spent hours trawling the dictionary to come up with stuff.

*laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

By the beginning of high school I'd already sucked all the words out of everything in easy reach, including the dictionaries and encyclopedias. It wasn't until I switched to University High School that I got access to fresh vocabulary. I learned "defenestration" in Western Civilization class there.

Re: *laugh*

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I had to scour the dictionary to come up with anything, it wasn't just a quick flip through.

Since you mention "Defenestration", I actually picked that one up when I was 9 or 10 or so, from an old collection of Pogo Comics. I should see if that's still around, actually, I think that panel would make a pretty good LJ Icon if I'm remembering it right.

"Defenestrate him!"
"No! Defenestration's too good for him! Throw him out the window!"

Then, when I was studying German in college, I picked up immediately that "Pfenster" was "Window" from that association.

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

I feel feeble; I only scored about 31,800. The thing I found interesting, though, is that the words I did not know were ones I would not generally encounter ANYwhere in the regular course of my communication. In fact, I gravely suspect I'd have to be reading a lot of classics from other eras to have enountered them. Another thing I noticed about the test, and this is a possible criticism, is that there were not very many technical or scientic terms (at least, this is my impression).

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

It did favor certain registers very heavily. While a lot of the words are ones I use readily, even the obscure ones, they do lean a lot on classics. The test is also pretty classist: it doesn't have the topic-specific words that blue-collar or rural folks would know but middle-class urbanites often would not.

Re: Yes...

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

In the meantime, it's a reminder for me to find some properly annotated copies of Dickens and such (footnotes! not endnotes) so I can actually read through them without getting too bogged down by the language and contextual references.

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Nicely annotated Shakespeare can be fun too.

Re: Yes...

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

I actually don't have much difficulty reading Shakespeare, oddly enough. :)

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Around 41K for me... but I read a LOT.