17 July 2011
This site has a rather fun and quick vocab test that purports to give you an estimate of your total vocabulary size. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of their vocabulary estimates, but even if not accurate, it’s fun.
It’s supposedly part of linguistic research project, and your participation will help some linguists somewhere. Although the site is vague about who is doing the research.
My estimated vocabulary is 34,400, which evidently is very respectable, near the top of the range within which most adult, native-speakers fall within. I was surprised by the number of words I recognized, but couldn’t come up with a definition. Context matters. Seeing them in a paragraph is a very different experience from seeing them in a list of words devoid of context. There was one word that I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen, but I knew the meaning right away: uxoricide.
[Tip o’ the hat to Languagehat.]
