100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know
The editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries recently published a list of the 100 words high school graduates should know. The list includes words like moiety, abrogate, circumlocution, precipitous, and sanguine. According to Steven Kleinedler, if you know these words you likely have a "superior command of the language." How many do you know?
Comments
Peter Schmidt said on August 1, 2007 11:37 PM:[link to this]
It seems a precipitous judgment, not to mention an overly sanguine one, to assume that knowing so many pretty arcane words will lead to the good use of such words in the right context. What's more likely to happen is circumlocution, the abrogation of sense--in other words, much nonsense and pretentiousness without a moiety of good judgment or clarity. Word. Hey, I'm all for learning new words, and I love dictionaries,
but this smacks of SAT cramming and (surprised?) a way to sell dictionaries by appealing to parents' anxieties. Did they double-check carefully to be sure it wasn't, say, 113 words rather than a round 100 that will make the difference?