100 words every high school graduate should know

June 13, 2007 7:49 AM

100 words every high school graduate should know (according to the editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries).
posted by mr_crash_davis (159 comments total)

Now that you've read the list, you don't need to buy the book. It's like $5.95 worth of free words!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:50 AM on June 13, 2007

I like how "kowtow" and "obsequious" are included.
posted by ntartifex at 7:57 AM on June 13, 2007

loquacious

...and the rest of us toil away in obscurity.
posted by davey_darling at 7:59 AM on June 13, 2007 [6 favorites]

Also titled 'List of the next 99 metafilter sockpuppets'
posted by fnord at 8:02 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

I think it is just precipitous of them to expect kids to bowdlerize these obviously diffident words. It just makes me bellicose to expurgate about it!
posted by buriednexttoyou at 8:03 AM on June 13, 2007 [5 favorites]

and if you don't know them all you had best buy a copy of our dictionary.....
posted by caddis at 8:04 AM on June 13, 2007

...and the rest of us toil away in obscurity.

The hell we do.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:04 AM on June 13, 2007 [3 favorites]

they forgot "pedant"
posted by Rumple at 8:05 AM on June 13, 2007 [6 favorites]

"abstemious" is only on the list so they know a word with all the vowels in alphabetical order. You'd be surprised how often that comes up, and you don't want to look like a fool without a quick answer.
posted by yhbc at 8:05 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

So nonsectarian is a single word? I mean, I'll accept that it has transmutatified from the hyphenated rabble if that is indeed the case. But it struck me as a bit odd.
posted by peacay at 8:06 AM on June 13, 2007

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves."

So basically another way for rich white people to feel good about themselves. Awesome.

This list is bullshit.
posted by mikeweeney at 8:06 AM on June 13, 2007

quasar
vortex

Some of these are really near misses.
posted by randomination at 8:06 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

At least everyone knows what paradigm means.
posted by MtDewd at 8:07 AM on June 13, 2007

Impeach.

lol.

I didn't know abjure, enervate, moiety, (and oh the irony) orthography.

I'd also heard the word obsequious, but never knew what it meant.

I don't like word lists like this, though, because they present a small set of "big" words that people should know, when in fact knowing those words should be an indicator of actually knowing many of the thousands of less commonly used words.

Are there any websites out there where you can test your vocab against a huge wordlist? I think that would be kind of fun.
posted by delmoi at 8:08 AM on June 13, 2007

does anyone else think this is largely meant for educated adults to read and go "shit! I don't know some of these! And I even went to college!" less of a "you high schoolers better learn this before you graduate" and more of a "haha, how dumb do you feel, alumnus?"
posted by shmegegge at 8:09 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Spell checkers will do that for you, delmoi.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:10 AM on June 13, 2007

Has anyone ever heard jejune used in any context except for this list?
posted by jourman2 at 8:10 AM on June 13, 2007

Someone called me a "jejune mefite" in that victorian flying chatroom the other day. Which was, somehow, more odd than the flying victorians.
posted by Skorgu at 8:13 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

I feel so bourgeois.
posted by SentientAI at 8:15 AM on June 13, 2007

I figure that I knew about half of these when I graduated from Wichita Southeast, home of the Golden Buffaloes.
posted by MarshallPoe at 8:17 AM on June 13, 2007

Bah. I don't need this list, or their book. I'll spend the money on ecdysiasts and alkaloids.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:24 AM on June 13, 2007

How about a list of 100 words every high school teacher should know?

1) phatty

Let the games begin...
posted by Muddler at 8:24 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

"Euro," really? Euro? How does knowing the adjective for European things and the name for the European monetary unit make you a better English speaker? I mean why not ruble, pound, dinar, or peso? Aldarian dollars!
posted by oddman at 8:25 AM on June 13, 2007

So basically another way for rich white people to feel good about themselves.

So in your mind, high school graduates are rich and white?
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:29 AM on June 13, 2007

This is exactly why metal is so educational.
abjure
abrogate
lugubrious
metamorphosis
sanguine
subjugate
chicanery
equinox
usurp
omnipotent
nihilism
auspicious
paradigm
feckless
hegemony
hubris
irony
kinetic
kowtow
lexicon
obsequious
parameter
plasma
precipitous
quasar
quotidian
recapitulation
totalitarian
vacuous
vehement
wrought
etc.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:29 AM on June 13, 2007 [16 favorites]

I am not white or rich and I feel very good about myself (only missed one!).

So nonsectarian is a single word? I mean, I'll accept that it has transmutatified from the hyphenated rabble if that is indeed the case. But it struck me as a bit odd.

In general, nonhyphenation is preferred, unless there are repeated vowels and you are not the New Yorker. Exceptions are also made for the giantly awkward.
posted by dame at 8:32 AM on June 13, 2007

the AP recently ran a story about some guy being "immured" by Iran. . . my first reaction was wtf [exactly] does immure mean, but having taught Latin roots in Japan for a year I saw that it was im + mur (in + wall) and knew that Iran had gone Edgar Allan Poe on this guy.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 8:35 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Paradigm.

posted by davy at 8:35 AM on June 13, 2007

In general, non-hyphenation is preferred,

fixed that for you.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 8:36 AM on June 13, 2007 [4 favorites]

No, wait, paradigm.
posted by davy at 8:36 AM on June 13, 2007

But wolfdog, I can't understand growled lyrics. Is there one Dark Metal vocalist who can actually SING?
posted by davy at 8:38 AM on June 13, 2007

Surely ecumenical would be a better choice than nonsectarian. I know they're not synonyms, but outside Scotland and Ireland, how much call for sectarianism is there?
posted by imperium at 8:42 AM on June 13, 2007

They forgot callipygian and pulchritude. Post-high chicks dig guys who can tell them they gots tha phat back and sweet rack with big words.
posted by carsonb at 8:42 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Brother can you paradigm?
posted by kirkaracha at 8:42 AM on June 13, 2007 [3 favorites]

Oh, and $5 for the first person to use all 100 in a plausible and grammatical sentence.
posted by imperium at 8:42 AM on June 13, 2007

I'm white, though not rich. I knew all the words. I still don't feel so hot about myself.
posted by adgnyc at 8:42 AM on June 13, 2007

Oh, and $5 for the first person to use all 100 in a plausible and grammatical sentence.

This is the kind of challenge I could see myself taking, spending all day on, and then wanting to kill myself when I was done. So, regretfully and respectfully, I decline.
posted by adgnyc at 8:44 AM on June 13, 2007

I used the word "tangential" (or "tangentially") is a meeting once and you'd have thought I took off my pants and danced on the table. People were stunned and could talk about nothing but the word "tangential" for the next several minutes.

My conculsion was that most people are philistines. Vacuous philestines.
posted by GuyZero at 8:46 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh, and $5 for the first person to use all 100 in a plausible and grammatical sentence.
The 100 words every high school student should know are: 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, and ziggurat.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:46 AM on June 13, 2007 [14 favorites]

Oh, and $5 for the first person to use all 100 in a plausible and grammatical sentence.

With padding, it would have to be a 150 to 200 word sentence. Which is almost by definition impossible.
posted by GuyZero at 8:47 AM on June 13, 2007

On non-preview: damn!
posted by GuyZero at 8:47 AM on June 13, 2007

"abstemious" is only on the list so they know a word with all the vowels in alphabetical order. You'd be surprised how often that comes up, and you don't want to look like a fool without a quick answer.

You're being facetious, right?
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:47 AM on June 13, 2007 [18 favorites]

"ziggurat"? I'm pretty sure that's only in there to support the "A-Z" claim. Or are we as a nation expecting a shortage of pagan high priestesses when the baby-boomers all retire?
posted by bonecrusher at 8:50 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ziggurat is a really great word to know if and only if you ever need to talk about ziggurats. It hasn't come up much for me.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:51 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

Most of these words are overly complex when a simpler word would convey the same meaning and be more easily understood. For example, more people will understand what I mean by "everyday experience" than would if I said "quotidian experience," and there isn't enough extra meaning in "quotidian" to justify having fewer people understand what I meant.

Which is clearer: "Utilize an excavational implement to actuate excrement," or "shovel shit"?
posted by kirkaracha at 8:52 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

When it comes to shoveling shit, you don't necessarily want to be clear.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:53 AM on June 13, 2007 [3 favorites]

Guyzero, I had the exact same experience using "capricious" in a meeting. There was much snickering at the far end of the table as various semi-literate wags speculated that I meant "In the manner of a crappy domestic car."

Idiots.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 8:53 AM on June 13, 2007

Pretentious isn't on the list.

These words might be important for a college grad interested in taking, say, the GRE. Sure, it would be good to know these words, especially if you are a reader, but I would think that this book and others like it just promote stilted freshman writing throughout the country.
posted by Grizzlepaws at 8:55 AM on June 13, 2007

I think the best thing that ever happened to my vocabularly as a kid was the Fiend Folio.
posted by The Straightener at 8:56 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

Put gamete and gauche together, and you get gamahuche, which is much more fun.

So nonsectarian is a single word?

Yes.

So basically another way for rich white people to feel good about themselves. Awesome.

I hope this is a failed joke. Or are you seriously suggesting that black people don't need anything more than Basic English?
posted by languagehat at 8:58 AM on June 13, 2007

Dear High School Graduates,

This list will not help you get laid.

Do with that what you will.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:01 AM on June 13, 2007

Moiety? When was the last time...scratch that...when have you ever heard someone use moiety in a sentence?

or gamete for that matter?
posted by JaredSeth at 9:02 AM on June 13, 2007

Until I looked it up, whilst I knew that winnow and whittle has similar meanings (figuratively) I never knew that winnow connotes a gentler act of removing something akin to sifting whereas whittle is somewhat more forceful. I actually find this quite fascinating.
posted by ob at 9:03 AM on June 13, 2007

Ziggurat is a good word if you want to drastically change the old Replacements song, "More Cigarrettes" to "More Ziggurats." And who wouldn't want to do that?
posted by COBRA! at 9:04 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

What? How is "cockmongery" not on this list?
posted by Greg Nog at 9:06 AM on June 13, 2007

I feel bad I couldn't link to an example for "notarize", but some things - a few things - are just not metal.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:06 AM on June 13, 2007

I think I'd smack someone on the noggin for using words like; inculcate, bowdlerize, and jejune.

Although I have to admit I like the broad definition of 'jejune', although the phrase "fuckin' lame" pretty much covers all possible permutations and is more readily understood by most listeners.

Although I might be bowdlerized if I wrote that down... Doh!
posted by elendil71 at 9:08 AM on June 13, 2007

Has anyone ever heard jejune used in any context except for this list?

Well, at an auspicious nanotechnology seminar recently, I was inculcated during one quotidian soliliquy on the taxonomy of plasma with a bit of fatuous chicanery that so enervated me I nearly choked on a jejune polymer, after which I interpolated that I should abjure a feckless and lugubrious lexicon in this new paradigm.

But other than that one time I damn near gagged on my pen cap, it hasn't come up.
posted by gompa at 9:09 AM on June 13, 2007

I got a room full of bogglement for using the word "demonstrably." It's not that we're pretentious, it's that everybody else is so stupid.

Word lists like this lead to phrases like pugnacious pugilistic paradigm, which leads to darkness.
posted by Skorgu at 9:10 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'd like to see the 100 words that non-rich, non-white high school graduates should know then.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 9:11 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

and there isn't enough extra meaning in "quotidian" to justify having fewer people understand what I meant

Except it is useful (a) if someone else used it or (b) you take French (or perhaps other Romance languages), and then you get like half your vocab for free.

But anyway, why argue against knowing more words? Words are fun. It is fun to say ziggurat. You can make more puns and bad jokes with a wider vocabulary. And depending on the girls you like, it can definitely get you laid. I mean, do you even know what kind of shit gets humanities nerd girls out of their clothes?!
posted by dame at 9:11 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

As I've previously said in a rant elsewhere about this same list:

This is just porn for vocabulary geeks. From here it looks like high schools need to concentrate on the proper spelling of "you", how to use apostrophes, the purpose of voting and so on.
posted by Foosnark at 9:12 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

Raise your hand if you can't read the word "xenophobe" without thinking of that video game that was cool for the first few quarters until you realized it sucked.
posted by jeremy b at 9:12 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

*raises hand to jeremy b*

bizarre game, entirely.
posted by Grizzlepaws at 9:16 AM on June 13, 2007

This is just porn for vocabulary geeks. From here it looks like high schools need to concentrate on the proper spelling of "you", how to use apostrophes, the purpose of voting and so on.

Such diffident and churlish hubris! A sort of abstemious irony, if you will.

*adjusts monocle*
posted by gompa at 9:18 AM on June 13, 2007

Also, a good way to tell whether these words are actually used by real people is to google them. If the #1 result is a dictionary, then there are likely simpler, better synonyms. Would somebody like to do those 100 Google searches and report back?
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 9:19 AM on June 13, 2007

gompa:

an irony which is sparing in consumption of food or drink?

Hoverboards:

I agree. There is virtue in knowing these words, but for clarity, alternates would be better.
posted by Grizzlepaws at 9:22 AM on June 13, 2007

some of my favorite words.

autocthonous anacoluthon benthic bactrian caryatid chiastic dryad dromedary (ok so I like camels) effulgent elixir fricative fungible gyrate glossolalia hagiography heirophant incarnadine igneous jocose japonica karyatid kinnikinnick labrys latinate mellifluous monstrance nacreous neophyte omphaloskepsis oocyte philtrum penultimate qualia quaff reliquary rhizome stochastic susurrus telos tertiary unguent umwelt verisimilitude verity wyrd woad xenia (ok no more good x-words) yarrow yaw zephyr | zealous yurt yew weal wont ventral victuals ululate ubermensch titration tangential sylvan sinter rereferrer rime quotidian quoits pyrrhic phial oneirodynia ontology nephilim nootropic myriad mews lithic laryngeal kouros kalliope jacaranda jeremiad interstitial ichthyology hermeneutics hyper(anything) glassine gregarious flagellation frangible eilodon exegesis dendritic dichroic cochineal cathecting bilabial bildüngsroman asterism alembic.
posted by exlotuseater at 9:22 AM on June 13, 2007 [4 favorites]

an irony which is sparing in consumption of food or drink?

Aye, verily, an irony in that spirit. An irony characterized by a teetotaler's restraint from unnecessary excess. If you will. As it were. Quid pro quo.

QED.
posted by gompa at 9:25 AM on June 13, 2007

Well, tons of these words will almost never be spoken aloud, but come up often enough in journalism and other writings that it's worthwhile to know them. Plus, whywould we bitch about them pushing for greater vocabulary in High School grads? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I own a copy of the American Heritage Dictionary's 100 Words Almost Everybody Confuses and Misuses, which is great for being a dick on boards about flout vs. flaunt and other such nonsense.

Oh, and GuyZero, what kind of lobotomized simian office do you work in where the phrase "tangentially" would raise an eyebrow, let alone stop a meeting? That just blows my mind.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:25 AM on June 13, 2007

"sanguine" is an awesome word.

fatuous
nihilism
nomenclature

Someone's been watching The Big Lebowski
posted by pardonyou? at 9:27 AM on June 13, 2007

ah yes, 100 Latinisms that every high school grad should know. Duly noted.
posted by Grizzlepaws at 9:28 AM on June 13, 2007

oh, and
/raises hand to jeremy b
posted by Navelgazer at 9:29 AM on June 13, 2007

Thanks for the link, this book sounds like a good companion to What Not To Say. Both would make good coffeetable books for grammar nerds and english professors.
posted by chlorus at 9:29 AM on June 13, 2007

This is just porn for vocabulary geeks.

What's wrong with that? Don't we vocabulary geeks deserve a little porn too?
posted by languagehat at 9:32 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

"expurgate" is kind of close, though I prefer parmanparman's misremembering of my handle as "exegenesis"
posted by exogenous at 9:33 AM on June 13, 2007

eye dunt no anee wurds.
posted by jonmc at 9:39 AM on June 13, 2007

/me hits command-F, types "beer", browser returns "not found."

Pffft. Nice try, but not nearly complete. Without this knowledge, no student can ever be considered truly educated.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:40 AM on June 13, 2007

I'm with dame, words are good, let's use more of them.

The english language has a fantastic vocabulary that should be taken advantage of whenever possible.

I must admit, if a book I am reading doesn't contain at least a few words that I don't know, then I am disappointed. Maybe my orthographical abilities are somewhat jejune?

Today's word is garrulous. Points are awarded for the number of times you can use the word without those you are speaking to stopping you to ask what it means.
posted by asok at 9:42 AM on June 13, 2007

I liked this better when I read it on digg last week.
posted by subaruwrx at 9:45 AM on June 13, 2007

I hope this is a failed joke. Or are you seriously suggesting that black people don't need anything more than Basic English?

What about us po' white folk?
posted by spicynuts at 9:45 AM on June 13, 2007

Of course, the phrase "not in common parlance" is recursive.
posted by imperium at 9:52 AM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

This list is bunk. It's pure marketing. What context would the typical modern high school student have for ziggurat? Firefox's spell checker doesn't even recognize it; it's red-underlined on my screen!

And lo, the page is a press release, why am I not surprised?
posted by JHarris at 9:54 AM on June 13, 2007

The absolute worst fuckin' thing about these lists is that every corpo-zombie team leader is going to start using them incorrectly to create office synergy.

"Stop fecking, Bob! Stop fecking! We've got to hegomize this company to the top!"
posted by The God Complex at 9:58 AM on June 13, 2007

So basically another way for rich white people to feel good about themselves. Awesome.

I'd like to see the 100 words that non-rich, non-white high school graduates should know then.

mikeweeney and hoverboards don't work on water, please explain to me how advanced vocabulary is limited only to rich white people. Are you suggesting that lower-class people, middle-class people, or people who aren't white, can't have an interest in advanced vocabulary? Do you mean that books with these words are accessible only to rich white people? What should people who aren't rich and white do if they encounter these words, ignore them?
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 10:04 AM on June 13, 2007

What's wrong with that? Don't we vocabulary geeks deserve a little porn too?

I'm all for development of the language arts, but I believe this should be a self-directed -- personalized -- effort, not some Central Committee handing down the Chairman's Approved List of Culturally Significant Vocabulary.

This hit me with my Japanese language studies. I hated my Japanese classes since they were filled with musty out of date and terminally uninteresting books with useless study items.

Once I got out in the real world I was able to develop my own language skills, idiosyncratically.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 10:04 AM on June 13, 2007

I thought this list was going to be squamous, but it turned out to be quite cromulent.
posted by boo_radley at 10:05 AM on June 13, 2007

With padding, it would have to be a 150 to 200 word sentence. Which is almost by definition impossible.

Not if you're Edgar A. Poe.
posted by drezdn at 10:10 AM on June 13, 2007

It's great that that...

impeach

is on the list, but am I shocked to see that there's no...

integrity?
posted by dbiedny at 10:10 AM on June 13, 2007

It's great that...

impeach

is on the list, but am I shocked to see that there's no...

integrity?
posted by dbiedny at 10:11 AM on June 13, 2007

Double THAT, double post.

Sometimes I HATE Firefox. Sorry.
posted by dbiedny at 10:11 AM on June 13, 2007

please explain to me how advanced vocabulary is limited only to rich white people. Are you suggesting that lower-class people, middle-class people, or people who aren't white, can't have an interest in advanced vocabulary? Do you mean that books with these words are accessible only to rich white people? What should people who aren't rich and white do if they encounter these words, ignore them?

It's not, really, but American discourse on socio-economic status is still stuck in the dark ages of racism. It's actually a list for the socio-economic up-and-comers, buzzwords to spin off at job interviews to show you "get it" and will fit into the team nicely. It's a language hijack, but it's nothing new, honestly. It's the sort of thing that happens all the time (see, as I mentioned earlier, "synergy" and other corporate buzzwords from the late 90s and early 00s), but usually not in such a clumsy and straightforward manner.

Besides, all this list would really prove is that the highschool student in question was capable of remembering how to use 100 words. It doesn't mean they display a great "command" of the English language, not really. It's more like a cheap way of pretending to have a great command of the language, like people who use the same five big words every day of their life ad nauseum.
posted by The God Complex at 10:15 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Raise your hand if you can't read the word "xenophobe" without thinking of that video game that was cool for the first few quarters until you realized it sucked.

I liked xenophobe! But then again, I ran out of quarters pretty quickly.
posted by triggerfinger at 10:18 AM on June 13, 2007

Moiety? When was the last time...scratch that...when have you ever heard someone use moiety in a sentence?

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station: Lin, the Khepri, reminiscing about her childhood. Before that, never, not even in biology class. Otherwise, it's a perfectly cromulent word.

My nitpick with the 100 words list: it's horribly incomplete. These kids are going to graduate not even being able to order a sandwich (try it; you can't!), let alone get a degree or start a career.
posted by kurumi at 10:22 AM on June 13, 2007

90% of these words were in my vocabulary workbooks in high school. Maybe they're trying to boost book sales with an arbitrary list of words I forgot about immediately after being tested on them.
posted by MidAtlantic at 10:25 AM on June 13, 2007

Whoah, Chinese Jet Pilot! You misinterpret me.

And if xenophobe gets all this attention, can we hear some love for Ziggurat Vertigo?
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 10:27 AM on June 13, 2007

It's not, really, but American discourse on socio-economic status is still stuck in the dark ages of racism. It's actually a list for the socio-economic up-and-comers, buzzwords to spin off at job interviews to show you "get it" and will fit into the team nicely.

Really? Ziggarut? Abstemious? Yeoman? What jobs are you interviewing for?

It's an ad for a book. People like words like it. Some people, who seem to have a weird language hangup that I have never understood, don't. Is language a signifier for class sometimes, even often? Sure. But this is not that fight.
posted by dame at 10:28 AM on June 13, 2007

who, people who like words
posted by dame at 10:29 AM on June 13, 2007

I, for one, offer the editors of the American Heritage Dictionary my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:37 AM on June 13, 2007

Has anyone ever heard jejune used in any context except for this list?

Boris (Woody Allen): Since when is murder a heroic act?

Sonia (Diane Keaton): Violence is justified in the service of mankind.

Boris: Who said that?

Sonia: Attila the Hun.

Boris: You're quoting a Hun to me?! Don't you know that murder carries with it a moral imperative that transcends any notion of inherent universal free will?

Sonia: Ooohhhhh ... that is incredibly jejune.

Boris: That's jejune?

Sonia: Jejune!

Boris: You have the temerity to say that I'm talking to you out of jejunosity? I'm one of the most june people in all the Russias!

-- Love and Death (1975)

Despite the fact that I went to a well-regarded high school and was in the honors English program, I never heard the word "jejune" until I saw the above movie in college. And I had to go look it up afterward.

Other than this, in my nearly 24 million minutes of life, I have never once heard the word "jejune" used in conversation, and have rarely enountered it in print.
posted by chuq at 10:40 AM on June 13, 2007 [3 favorites]

Really? Ziggarut? Abstemious? Yeoman? What jobs are you interviewing for?

Oh... dungeon master, I suppose.
posted by logicpunk at 10:46 AM on June 13, 2007 [4 favorites]

dame, sorry, I was half tongue in cheek and half out. My broader point was simply to clarify that what people were/are really talking about is a class difference, not a race one. Other than that, I was just indulging in a bit of gamesmanship, so to speak.

Though I do think there is a fair chance the corpo-zombies will seize on this sort of thing. And, equally, I think "yeoman" is perhaps the best word on the list for a job interview! "I like to do the 'yeoman's share' of the work". Heck, it means loyal, valiant, and workmanlike! Equally, an ostensibly "abstemious" lifestyle will get you all sorts of positions in the American government these days. In fact, it's the centerpiece of their sex ed program! ;)
posted by The God Complex at 10:46 AM on June 13, 2007

I know most of these! Hooray!
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 10:47 AM on June 13, 2007

It was about a quarter past way too damn early. The phone kept on recapitulating its horribly jangly music, but there was no way I was gonna abjure that receiver off the hook just now. I needed a ziggurat almost as bad as I needed an aspirin, and I needed an aspirin almost as bad as I needed the hair of the proverbial dog, but I felt too churlish to hold any of it down, so I searched abstemiously for my Chesterfields and my Zippo.

Stop goddamn ringing!

Okay, coffin nail in mouth, check, sweet taste of tobacco impeaching my tastebuds, and I was just about ready to belie down and steal forty offa Mr. Sandman when the phone started ringing its horrible antebellum again. The only way I was gonna stop it was answer it with my .38, or my voice. I chose the latter, and immediately regretted.

"Why Mr. Lexicon, I thought you'd never answer. Have you forgotten about our little meeting?"

It was that sweet little filibuster from last night, the one with the gametes up to here. I got that sinking feeling in my gut, that one that guarantees you're about to interpolate a whole world of trouble.
posted by arto at 10:48 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

once upon a time, i was sentenced to take a class after a conviction for reckless driving. i questioned the teacher's credentials and sarcastically referred to her as a "pillar of rectitude". immediately, from behind me, a loud male voice queried "what did you just call her??"

more teacher fun: in arizona awhile back, a high school principal ordered security to remove a teacher from the grounds after she admitted in a conference that she was a "pedagogue".

i'm sure most of you have heard the story out of washington, d.c. about the city official who described his attitude toward spending public money as "niggardly".
posted by bruce at 10:54 AM on June 13, 2007

I knew all of them, and use maybe half of them. I think, though, that the authors are asserting that a well-educated person should have run across those words by the time they graduate high school, not that all students should be given that list to memorize absent of context.

My vocab story? I had a lawyer ask me to hide some content on one of his documents. I send a note back telling him I'd elided the offending bits. He sent me a note back thanking me for doing the work, and for teaching him a new word (elide). It cracked me up.
posted by Karmakaze at 10:55 AM on June 13, 2007

I have heard the word jejune more than once in conversation. I think it's a pretentious word, but it is used.

And can people please stop pretending that any word they don't personally use/know is some weird thing dug up by dictionary makers for their profit and/or sadistic pleasure? Your vocabulary is not the measure of all things.
posted by languagehat at 10:59 AM on June 13, 2007

more teacher fun: in arizona awhile back, a high school principal ordered security to remove a teacher from the grounds after she admitted in a conference that she was a "pedagogue".

"Your search - arizona, high school principal, teacher, pedagogue - did not match any documents."

Citation please?
posted by languagehat at 11:02 AM on June 13, 2007

Has anyone ever heard jejune used in any context except for this list?

Yes. I first encountered the word in a Calvin and Hobbes strip, in which Calvin refers to the standard-issue snowmen in his neighborhood.
posted by JDHarper at 11:04 AM on June 13, 2007

Doesn't anyone else know management types who try to use Big Words without knowing the meanings? Doesn't anyone else deliberately expose said execs to fun new Big Words to see if they'll pick them up and start abusing them with hilarious results? What fun we could have had, what wonderful games if this list had only come out while I was still at my last job!

Oh. Maybe that's why I'm unemployed.
posted by dilettante at 11:13 AM on June 13, 2007

I see I've been doing it all wrong, TGC!
posted by dame at 11:18 AM on June 13, 2007

i couldn't find it on google either, l-hat. huh?
posted by bruce at 11:19 AM on June 13, 2007

It really seems like cromulent is on its way to the dictionary (according to the wikipedia it already is in websters). While it's hilarious that it is becoming a "real" word, doesn't that actually detract a little from the whole joke of using it?
posted by drezdn at 11:20 AM on June 13, 2007

Point is, Mr Hat, unless 99% of listeners understand a word when you use it, it's pretty stupid to go ahead and do so anyway. Think it to yourself if that makes you happy, but don't try to use it to get your point across.

There are lots of words in this rich language of ours that effectively serve no purpose whatsoever - they do nothing more than act as shibboleths (ha), dividing those who think themselves clever from the rest of us. In pretty much all cases, it'd be much better to just banish them from the language and use the simple, Anglo-Saxon-er word that everyone understands.
posted by reklaw at 11:24 AM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ah, finally. Proof that my alma mater did me some good. I did know many of these words. Ziggarut, which seems to be debated, was very important. You see, at my university, the library is in a ziggarut. Or as the hoodlums called it, the "Q-bert" building.

Ziggarut was way more fun to say. That makes up for me only knowing 90 of them.
posted by teleri025 at 11:26 AM on June 13, 2007

reklaw- We don't get to hear so many good words because people insist on dumbing down. If we are not exposed to other words we will certainly not use them. In many cases context can begin the process of learning a word.

Avarice and greed have similar meanings but the sharp edges and snaky sibilant of "avarice" communicate a different feel entirely than the throaty roundness of "greed". The language is richer for it.
posted by pointilist at 11:41 AM on June 13, 2007

I recognize most of the words on this list, but only through reading. I'd love to use the in conversation but I have no idea how the damned things are pronounced!
posted by lekvar at 11:42 AM on June 13, 2007

There are lots of words in this rich language of ours that effectively serve no purpose whatsoever

Other than, say, affording the speaker a plethora of options for being precise or subtle or even colorful/interesting. Who the hell wants to live in a world where there are limits on the number of words one can use? Language is beautiful and complex and gives us character. How about we banish small mindedness rather than words? I'm supposed to stop using words because some boob might think I'm trying to be high and might? Maybe I like words. Do you want to propose a few complex chords you think are too pretentious for use in music and we can all listen to something more Anglo-Saxon-y?

I really don't understand the objection to freakin words.
posted by spicynuts at 11:48 AM on June 13, 2007

Point is, Mr Hat, unless 99% of listeners understand a word when you use it, it's pretty stupid to go ahead and do so anyway.

This is why our culture's bound straight to the shitter. I absolutely agree that the point of verbal communication is to communicate, but this doesn't in any wise require that the speaker tune his or her utterances to the precise level of the audience.

Sometimes the right word - a technical term, or perhaps a concept (setsunai, schadenfreude, etc.) expressed perfectly in a single word in another language for which there is no direct English equivalent - is something that a significant part of your audience won't be familiar with.

When such a situation arises, you've really got to go with that word. People aren't idiots: they'll get it from context. Or you'll explain it. Either way, you're showing them respect, which cannot be said for a speaker who dumbs everything down for the benefit of some imagined "99% of listeners."
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:59 AM on June 13, 2007

Definitions:

abjure, abrogate, abstemious, acumen, antebellum, auspicious, belie, bellicose, bowdleriz, 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
posted by blue_beetle at 12:01 PM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

My "high-school vocab" story:

I was in a college-level International Relations class. One student was defending his position as a Realist. Midway through his mini-speech, he says, "You know, I'm a laissez faire kinda guy..." The girl immediately behind him lets out a loud "Eeewwwwwwww!"

That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the class.
posted by lekvar at 12:10 PM on June 13, 2007

There are lots of words in this rich language of ours that effectively serve no purpose whatsoever - they do nothing more than act as shibboleths (ha), dividing those who think themselves clever from the rest of us. In pretty much all cases, it'd be much better to just banish them from the language and use the simple, Anglo-Saxon-er word that everyone understands.

Why should I - or anyone - not use a word that perfectly encompasses what I mean just because people are too lazy to open a dictionary?

There were a few words on the list whose definition escaped me: I looked them up. I may never use "moiety" in a sentence, but it's cool to know it. The fact that someone else may think I'm a high-falutin' snobby bitch because I use a word they don't know, and are too lazy to look up, is not my frakking (sp?) problem.
posted by rtha at 12:28 PM on June 13, 2007

But anyway, why argue against knowing more words?

I'm not arguing against knowing the words, I'm arguing against using them if there's a synonym that's more commonly used.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:31 PM on June 13, 2007

I'm arguing against using them if there's a synonym that's more commonly used.

They don't teach discretion in high school.
posted by carsonb at 12:33 PM on June 13, 2007

"You know, I'm a laissez faire kinda guy..." The girl immediately behind him lets out a loud "Eeewwwwwwww!"

Maybe she just objected to neoliberalism?
posted by atrazine at 12:33 PM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'd like to see the 100 words that non-rich, non-white high school graduates should know then.

I couldn't find a whole lot in the original list that consistently suggested wealth or whiteness, but nevertheless, I thought I'd try my hand at this task:

illustrious, snacks, panoply, piece, chop, super, silverfish, egregious, hypertrophy, detriment, collie, whoa, romulan, fortitude, calumny, impresario, whoops, incur, quixotic, lugubrious, shampoo, tremulous, hamster, clamster, corpulence, pastiche, yodeller, mastication, pocket, nasty, fancy, prancy, clancy, gregarious, devastate, effusive, bulbasaur, hysteria, wisteria, opulent, gingerly, oh, demonstrative, gobsmacked, elbow, chronological, ferrous, muppet, numinous, pretty gay, ungulate, prestidigitator, granfaloon, pube, nicety, vermillion, navigatrix, ample, jackanape, jackalope, jackalopette, strop, mollusk, toast, vascillate, terrestrial, crap, n00b, edelweiss, omphaloskeptic, mendacious, landlocked, querulous, rasterize, palindrome, yolk, deleterious, cylindrical, libation, invigorate, balls, ballsy, ballsily, ballsiest, ballsery, Patricia Balls-Smith, fulminate, virulent, keratin, zesty, credence, acrimony, velour, salubrious, oscillation, flense, chapped, locomote, stellastarr*, recapitulate

I'm gonna sell a book is what I'm gonna do.
posted by Greg Nog at 12:45 PM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

I think I'd smack someone on the noggin for using words like; inculcate, bowdlerize, and jejune.

Hey, bowdlerizers play an important (if minor) role in just about every Jasper Fforde novel! Step off!
posted by GuyZero at 12:49 PM on June 13, 2007

what kind of lobotomized simian office do you work in where the phrase "tangentially" would raise an eyebrow

Ok, a more accurate description was my coworkers were mocking me for my propensity to use five-dollar words in the place of 5-cent ones.
posted by GuyZero at 12:57 PM on June 13, 2007

Moiety: quite commonly used in shop-talk among chemists (e.g., "hydrophobic moiety"). Hear it pretty regularly around here. Can't recall ever hearing it used by normal people, though.
posted by Quietgal at 1:01 PM on June 13, 2007

Yeah, I use Moiety all the time, it's used as a technical kinship term in Anthropology. But I wouldn't say all high school students need it.
posted by Rumple at 1:19 PM on June 13, 2007

A classmate in university had a tongue-twister that he used on students with a Chinese/Japanese accent to good effect. (yes, it's somewhere between mean and racist but I think he was really trying to help them on some level):

Molarity, Molality, Morality, (Professor) Moriarty. So I guess you could add Moiety to the list.
posted by GuyZero at 1:22 PM on June 13, 2007

this thread demands the 'nerdfight' tag.

that is all.
posted by lonefrontranger at 2:10 PM on June 13, 2007

"...unless 99% of listeners understand a word when you use it, it's pretty stupid to go ahead and do so anyway."

Did you know the Esquimeaux have 137 words for "bullshit"?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:24 PM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Step off, ziggurat haters.

If you can't use that word, how do you describe where the entrance the fifth Vault of Night quest in House Kundarak is located? On top of that multi-level pyramid thingie?

NO. You say, VON5 is on the ziggurat in House K.

Haters.
posted by Justinian at 3:19 PM on June 13, 2007

exlotuseater: some of my favorite words.

Some of mine.
posted by juv3nal at 3:19 PM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

When such a situation arises, you've really got to go with that word. People aren't idiots: they'll get it from context. Or you'll explain it. Either way, you're showing them respect, which cannot be said for a speaker who dumbs everything down for the benefit of some imagined "99% of listeners."

Well, I fully support you if there's a word you just can't live without and you explain it inside dashes or brackets, but I don't think that situation comes up too often. It's just putting it out there all of a sudden that I object to - it's jarring, it's pretentious, it's like a little linguistic "fuck you" to the reader.

Note that this doesn't mean that you shouldn't use technical words where they're useful and will be understood - if you're writing for Farming Today, feel free to use technical words for tractor parts, as long as you keep them out of writing for a general audience and everyday speech.

The pompous, over-verbed language of business, in particular, has a way of seeping out into day-to-day culture that really shits me, as do words that people think they're so clever for knowing, like "schadenfreude". It's language-as-social-status, not communication.
posted by reklaw at 3:22 PM on June 13, 2007

The pompous, over-verbed language of business, in particular, has a way of seeping out into day-to-day culture that really shits me, as do words that people think they're so clever for knowing, like "schadenfreude". It's language-as-social-status, not communication.

I'll agree with you on the business language thing - it's just so much jargony bullshit. It's ugly and usually intentionally obfuscatory.

But schadenfreude? Invent me an English word (just one, please, not a sentence or phrase) that means the same thing. For the record, I don't think I'm "clever" for knowing it. I like words; I like to look things up. Sue me.

While language can be - and is - used as a class/social signifier, I'll still argue that the listener can do their part and crack open a dictionary. I had a miserable teacher in elementary school who - gasp - refused to do our work for us. If we didn't know what a word meant, we had to look it up.
posted by rtha at 3:41 PM on June 13, 2007

I agree with rtha about schadenfreude being a good word to know, and useful to boot. On the other hand, I have a friend who has said it approximately 150 times in the past 6 months, which is approximately 145-149 instances more often than it was actually merited, so I can sympathize with reklaw as well.
posted by shmegegge at 3:48 PM on June 13, 2007

Oh, and GuyZero, what kind of lobotomized simian office do you work in where the phrase "tangentially" would raise an eyebrow, let alone stop a meeting?


You should have been there when my use of the word "prattle" caused a five minute meeting stoppage.
posted by MikeMc at 4:04 PM on June 13, 2007

Hmmm... In sixth grade, I called my teacher an "autocratic megalomaniac."

Wow. I caught all kinds of kids using the words after his amazingly inappropriate and overly dramatic response to my voicing my opinion.

Truthfully, my vocabulary is quite good, due to my excessive reading. Oh, and my ability to winkle out the definitions from the context, which seems a dying skill.

My problem?

Books don't exactly teach one to PRONOUNCE them properly. I used to really tickle a friend, who was the Dean of Communications at a local college...
posted by Samizdata at 4:11 PM on June 13, 2007

Oh. I would have been jejune then, right?
posted by Samizdata at 4:14 PM on June 13, 2007

This is exactly why metal is so educational

I was never big on metal, so I had to learn all my big words from Bad Religion songs.
posted by Andrew Brinton at 4:24 PM on June 13, 2007

This list would have been more interesting if it had divided language into The 10 Most Important categories and then chose the 10 most useful/interesting words for each.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 5:25 PM on June 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Loquacious? That gauche, anti-abstemious, churlish, bellicose, fatuous, obsequious, feckless, supercilious, vacuous, chromosome-challenged paradigm of bowdlerizing chicanery?

I abjure this lexicon, and refuse to kowtow to its totalitarian orthography.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:10 PM on June 13, 2007

I figure that I knew about half of these when I graduated from Wichita Southeast, home of the Golden Buffaloes.

Or, as American Heritage would have it, the Aureate Ungulates. ("Gimme an A!" "A!"...)
posted by rob511 at 6:19 PM on June 13, 2007

"Your search - arizona, high school principal, teacher, pedagogue - did not match any documents."

Citation please?

It was probably lost in the transcription, languagehat. Replace "pedagogue" with "paedophile" and you get a few hundred hits.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:36 PM on June 13, 2007

I like how "kowtow" and "obsequious" are included.

Not to mention "plagiarism." I've seen most of these words before in other books!
posted by mrgrimm at 6:38 PM on June 13, 2007

juv3nal: Thank you. I am embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of nor seen that. I'm very excited.
posted by exlotuseater at 7:08 PM on June 13, 2007

Has anyone ever heard jejune used in any context except for this list?

Yes. I first encountered the word in a Calvin and Hobbes strip, in which Calvin refers to the standard-issue snowmen in his neighborhood.

When I had to write my standard law school admissions essay in the past year, after three or four swings at it, I finally settled on "Calvin & Hobbes" teaching me vocabulary and philosophy and setting me on an obsessive course for both. Tonight, on my way home from a free show of the MET Opera in Central Park - full of non-whites and the non-rich, I might add - my friend told me a story of how he tried to intentionally fail a private school interview as a child.

He talked about Calvin & Hobbes. The interviewer loved it, and they accepted him.

As for me, I got into Georgetown, which is far better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, or even a dull one. Turns out we don't need fancy education, necessarily, to learn what certain words are. We just need to stop thinking that when somebody says something we don't know, that they're pretentious jack-asses trying to prove how much better they are.

I didn't know every word in the list (I missed about five) and I don't think the list is by any means difinitive. It's meant to sell a book. My parents recently sent me a Marilyn Vos Savant book entitled Growing Up which details everything she believes a child should know and do by the time they are 18. It is very clearly based on her own idealized childhood, and is of course bullshit. But that doesn't mean that there aren't useful things to be gleaned from it.

Let me say this in no uncertain terms. If you are one of the people bitching about people using words that you don't know, where you believe there to be synonyms "close enough" to avoid their usage, then you are being willfully ignorant. Words have different connotations (subtle meanings, for the small-word folk) and specific contexts to warrant their place in different usages. If you find this troubling, then the problem is entirely - entirely - with you. You are the one who thinks other people's education, or simply greater life experience, is an issue, and not the other way around. The problem is with you.

Kindly fornicate off now.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:03 PM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites]

Make me, you great raving omphaloskeptic!
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:20 AM on June 14, 2007

What, no "limn"?

/Michiko
posted by Wolof at 12:25 AM on June 14, 2007

If you are one of the people bitching about people using words that you don't know

It's not about which words I know or don't know. Heck I love words. But everyday conversation doesn't warrant it. For everyday conversation, oftentimes synonyms are "close enough." That's not being willfully ignorant, that's being respectful to the people you're talking to.

Not everyone has the opportunity to learn what connotation means. Not everyone who has that opportunity needs or wants to take advantage of it. When I go to the doctor, I don't want a diagnosis filled with jargon I don't understand. My doctor understands that and frames any such discussion in terms I can grasp.

Using a "five dollar word" when a synonym is close enough is like the doctor choosing to use jargon even when they know you won't understand. Sure there are specific situations where nothing else will accurately describe what they are talking about, but generally that's not true. If my doctor does this all the time, it isn't making an issue of his education or greater life experience; it's making an issue of the fact that he's being a dick.
posted by juv3nal at 1:27 AM on June 14, 2007

I remember reading in the local newspaper about a woman who had recently moved to the neighbourhood. She had been living there for a couple of weeks before word got around that she was, in fact, a practicing pediatrician, and some local/s took it open themselves to spraypaint her house and car with "Pedo!' (sic) and "go home!" and many other slogans not fit for print.

Suffice to say, she was most distraught, and a collective slap of the forehead was heard as the city read its paper the next day. Sigh. There's no saving some people from their own ignorance.
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 3:49 AM on June 14, 2007

My dad and I had a fun email conversation about this list last week or so. I was saddened by my inability to smoothly work sesquipedalian into a sentence.

And antebellum is one of those like ziggurat that just really isn't that relevant any more. Do we have pretentious words for the era before Dubya, before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," or before the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
posted by phrits at 3:55 AM on June 14, 2007

juv3nal, why would you use the word "opportunity" when "chance" would be just as good? You think you're better than us?
posted by Greg Nog at 4:52 AM on June 14, 2007

Bizarre how people act as if this list said "100 words every high school student should memorize in a rote fashion." It suggested that they should recognize the words. I think I would have recognized about 85% at graduation Why? Because I read a lot and fairly widely. Because my family talked up words at home, even breaking out the dictionary to settle arguments.

No, these words don't crop up in conversation. Is conversation the only use of language? If we want to read the journals of Lewis and Clark, or the writings of Samuel Johnson, or film reviews in the New Yorker, or summaries of legal cases, we'll need to know these words. Are these things that only specialists should be able to do?

Imagine if everyone around you had access to this level of language. I'm not saying that everyone would be dropping "pecuniary" for no reason, but that everyone knew these words and, at the perfect spot, used them. Everyone you knew could move among linguistic communities -- "low" and "high." and translate. That would be cool.
posted by argybarg at 6:40 AM on June 14, 2007

You think you're better than us?

Naw. Just better than you, Mr. Nog.
posted by juv3nal at 9:41 AM on June 14, 2007

Touché!

If that french was too esoteric for the rest o' you proles, I'll helpfully provide the English translation: "(I am) Touchy!"
posted by Greg Nog at 11:30 AM on June 14, 2007

As a Norwegian university student of 23, I knew 71 and could guesstimate another ~10.

Some of them were ... esoteric, to say the least.
posted by flippant at 12:30 PM on June 14, 2007