Saturday, June 23, 2007

100 Words

From American Heritage:  100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know.

Apparently, these folks have never seen the vocabulary exercise in each and every Reader's Digest (what? lines at WalMart are long, and I have to read something).  The vocabulary in those is much less challenging.

For the record, here is the list.  Words I know off the top of my head are bolded.  If I'm pretty sure but not 100% sure, the word is italicized.

Edit: the bold was hard to see; it's yellow now too.
  • abjure
  • abrogate
  • abstemious
  • acumen
  • antebellum
  • auspicious
  • belie
  • bellicose
  • bowdlerize
  • chicanery
  • chromosome
  • churlish
  • circumlocution
  • circumnavigate
  • deciduous
  • deleterious
  • diffident
  • enervate
  • enfranchise
  • epiphany
  • equinox
  • euro
  • evanescent
  • expurgate
  • facetious
  • fatuous
  • feckless
  • fiduciary
  • filibuster
  • gamete
  • gauche
  • gerrymander
  • hegemony
  • hemoglobin
  • homogeneous
  • hubris
  • hypotenuse
  • impeach
  • incognito
  • incontrovertible
  • inculcate
  • infrastructure
  • interpolate
  • irony
  • jejune
  • kinetic
  • kowtow
  • laissez faire
  • lexicon
  • loquacious
  • lugubrious
  • metamorphosis
  • mitosis
  • moiety
  • nanotechnology
  • nihilism
  • nomenclature
  • nonsectarian
  • notarize
  • obsequious
  • oligarchy
  • omnipotent
  • orthography
  • oxidize
  • parabola
  • paradigm
  • parameter
  • pecuniary
  • photosynthesis
  • plagiarize
  • plasma
  • polymer
  • precipitous
  • quasar
  • quotidian
  • recapitulate
  • reciprocal
  • reparation
  • respiration
  • sanguine
  • soliloquy
  • subjugate
  • suffragist
  • supercilious
  • tautology
  • taxonomy
  • tectonic
  • tempestuous
  • thermodynamics
  • totalitarian
  • unctuous
  • usurp
  • vacuous
  • vehement
  • vortex
  • winnow
  • wrought
  • xenophobe
  • yeoman
  • ziggurat
Huh.  Better than I thought I'd do...but my vocabulary has always been pretty good.

I want to know, though, why "recapitulate" is on there and "capitulate" isn't -- if you know what "capitulate" means, you should know that to recapitulate means to give up again.  (Or, to "go over" something again -- restate it.  Suppose that's why it's on the list...it's counterintuitive.)

Just sayin'.

On a totally (and I do mean totally) unrelated note, I've had the song "Blame Canada" from the South Park movie stuck in my head for about a week.  A straight jacket may be necessary before long.

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