Over the last few years, Words for Nerds has been a regular feature in my blogs. To qualify as a Word for Nerds, it must meet three criteria –
1. The word must be in current usage, not an archaic term.
2. The word must be usable in general conversation, not a narrow, technical term.
3. The word must be very uncommon, but not totally obscure. (This is the tricky one. The perfect Word for Nerds is one which you kind of recognize, but don’t quite exactly know the meaning of.)
Many of the words on the Words for Nerds list are ones I had to look up when reading.
They’re tough; over my head, anyway, for the most part. So here’s the complete list to-date. How many of these 57 head scratchers do you know? Give it a try, and at the end, check out the Word Sell Challenge.
The World’s Hardest Vocabulary Test
- Schadenfreude
- Defenestration
- Adumbrate
- Encomium
- Blandish
- Turpitude
- Fribble
- Solipsism
- Captious
- Protean
- Heuristic
- Quotidian
- Avuncular
- Somnolent
- Juggernaut
- Recondite
- Peripatetic
- Parsimonious
- Bricolage
- Punctilio
WHEW! That had to be tough. My hat’s off to anybody who knew more than ten. If you knew 20 or more, well, you have one of the best vocabularies IN THE WORLD!
Probably only about 8 I could try and define – might do better choosing from multiple choice answers (though that’s a bit of a cheat)
I don’t think I can resist your challenge – I’ll see what I can do!
Joanna
Okay, just skimming the list looking for words I recognize and would know if I read them in a sentence. 27. To actually try to define, though? Fewer. Because this is the problem with a good working vocabulary–you can use it yourself but trying to share it with others is tricky! It’s like trying to explain how you know when your bread dough is the right consistency–you just KNOW, but it’s an internal thing (grin).
Joanna, I thought about multiple choice, but it would take me forever to put that together. Deb, building a working vocabulary is hard work all the way around. I can’t resist the urge to look up a word if I don’t know it, but remembering the definition is tough. Even though I wrote extensive posts about each of these words, I still can’t precisely define several of them. How do you and Joanna build your vocabularies? I’m really curious.
Brad, 1) read 2) tune into my parents’ conversations!
I am thinking about challenging my dad to this test
Joanna
That sounds like a fun challenge, but I can’t help thinking that the post would be very hard to read.
Joanna, thanks for the tips. Let us know how your dad does on the test – from what you’ve shared I expect big things. John, such a post would be difficult, but may serve as a way to help people take their vocabulary to the next level.
Brad,
What a tough vocabulary test! Got seven and almost got an eighth. Defined somnolent as “asleep,” when it actually means “sleepy” or “drowsy.” Not exactly right–but close!
Thanks for challenging us to learn new words!
Jeanne
Jeanne,seven or eight is not bad at all. I dubbed this “world’s hardest” for a reason!
Cool. I did well, but the sad part is I recognized a lot of words that I looked up recently and still didn’t get quite right.
Just gotta keep drilling on that Firefox dictionary search extension…
It helps if you ever studied Latin, Greek, or one of the Romance languages. Most of these words have Greco-Roman etymologies.
1. Jejune is a marine boot camp.
2. Pissmire is the muddy ground around a portajohnny that leaks.
3. A moil is a mafioso’s girlfriend.
4. A fribble is a milkshake at Friendly’s.
5. Protean is a non-crabohydrate nutrient.
6. Gravamen haul stone from the river bed.
7. A parapatetic is a vet that specializes in those little caged birds.
8. Turpitude is what you use to clean paint brushes with.
9. A sinecure is a medical treatment for mathematicians who are all clogged up from a cold.
10. A juggernaut is a NASA employee who can keep 6 or 7 balls in the air at once.
That’s ten. What is it I win, again?
Harl, I like some of your definitions better than the conventional ones. DH, too bad most of us don’t know Latin or Greek these days. Our vocabularies would be much better. AD, it’s tough to remember words unless you use them, and a lot of these are hard to work into a conversation.
I was familiar with many of these words from reading “classic” novels but I forgot their meanings! I think most avid readers stumble across these words at some point. That being said I only remembered a few words.
Jrock, I have the same problem. Even after writing posts about the words, I have trouble remembering some of them.
It’s April Fool’s day, so on my blog, I made a post – “It Pays To Increase Your Word Power” with funny definitions for all these words. Click on my name to go directly to that page….
Very good, Harl! Some of your definitions are better than the originals.
Learning new words is a sort of hobby for me…felt delighted to come across your post…
I had been writing a blog http://wordabode.blogspot.com
since last month – each post about some word which we don’t normally use but might as well
I will try to write a post using around 10 Nerd words
It is a veritable hegemony of the non-nerds. Hark! The vilification of my innocent penchant for words grows! The gravamen of these captious canard-mongers is that my otiose propensity for sesquipedalian vocabulary is nothing but a blatant rodomontade. Alas, even Uncle Bob seems to have shed his affable avuncular indulgence and seems to have transmogrified into some flagitious “word philistine”.
Why?! Did I ever ask you to sing an encomium or even cheaply blandish my efforts? I asked none…only with the hope to be conferred with the dignity of a Nerd.
Do I not understand that my occassional circumbendibus ramblings even in colloquialism might have sounded cacophonosly recondite and my writing insuperable to the masses. My purpose is not to communicate- neither to discombobulate. It is a silently puissant uprising – in my own way- to the quotidian order of the day an increasing tendency to extol some ill-defined putative goodness of the forced parsimony of verbiage. Pardon my lack of protean tastes of rebellion – I will stand my ground!
In conclusion of the adumbration of my mission, I can only hope to look forward with an unbridled Micawberism that my vacuous detractors will find me far too soporific and that Somnolence will win over Schadenfreude!
Jeevanjyoti, that is some incredible comment you just left! Thanks for visiting Word Sell. Good luck with your blog. It’s already given me a few spectacular adds to my vocabulary.
Thanks a lot! Just for the record, I never write like that and I fully appreciate the nice guest post of Joanna Young….was only trying to cross the 10 Nerd words barrier…
Jeevanjyoti, let’s hope nobody writes like that on a regular basis! Your comment was enjoyable regardless.
This was hard.
I agree that it’s a lot easier if you have some knowledge of Classical or Romance languages – my A-Level French and Latin helped me get a solid 19 with a couple of vaguely-right ‘guesstimations’. Fiendishly tough, and enjoyably so!
Hayley, no question, 19 is an outstanding score. My hat’s off to you!
Grampus, foozle, moil, and aril. The rest I knew and enjoyed. I would be glad to contribute some from my working collection for “hardest” list mark 2. For me, old and superannuated phrases or phrasal verbs are the most interesting. They have a flavor that can enrich period writing where most of these, if used, merely pose and annoy.
Gregory, You are the new champion – very impressive. Thanks for visiting Word Sell.
I could only make 9. I should work on my vocabulary somehow…
Rakesh, 9 is not bad at all, even though some vocabulary superstars have reported big numbers. Thanks for taking the test!
i got 38 correct; however, i enjoy reading dictionaries for fun and collect books on interesting and challenging words. an even more challenging test is the schmies vocabulary test, for which i scored a 172.
http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/schmies.html
Goosemeister, 38 correct is awesome. Thanks for pointing out the schmeis test – can’t wait to try it.
46 correct.
22 years old. lover of wide and varied reading.
pretty sure i once knew a few more, like nictitate…
After completed “Verbal Advantage” and couple of other vocabulary builders, I understand 29 of them.
dmouth07 & toglodyte, Fine job! Thanks for taking the test.
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I, too, probably know most of the 30 I recognized more in context than being able to actually define them. But a good dozen or so I actually use in conversations and chats/blogs. So if just knowing 20 of them gives us the best vocabularies in the world, you’ve got a whole bunch of smarty pants whose friends roll their eyes when we start to spout off. As well they should.
I actually heard Keith Olbermann use Schadenfreude on his show this week! He slips in quite a few $3 words on a regular basis. Almost as much fun as listening to vintage Dennis Miller routines!
(My demographic: 57 year old, white, female undergraduate.)
Hi Mollymorph, Yes, Olberman and Miller would score off the charts.
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I would have felt comfortable using some 25 of those without needing to look them up beforehand. I’d heard of a few of the others, but didn’t know their meaning. The rest I’d never come across before. Some are quite fascinating. Thanks for that list. I can’t wait to use “defenstrate” (I actually guessed it would have something to do with windows: somehow I knew “finistra” is the Italian for window).
Oops, make that “finestra.”
Silver, You have to wonder how we got “window” out of “finistra” or the Latin root of that word. Thanks for taking the test!
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Brad, the way we got “window” out of “finestra” or the Latin root of that word is — we didn’t. Many of the words in the English language don’t come from Latin or Greek, but from other languages, in this case, a Scandinavian one.
Window is related to the Old Norse word “vindauga” which means window; it’s a compound word from “vindr” meaning wind, and “auga” which means eye. It wasn’t all that long ago that windows contained no glass. Pane comes from the Latin “pannus” which means cloth; it evidently morphed to panel, although it sounds like they’re talking about curtains, doesn’t it?
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Harl, Thank you for the background – fascinating! This is a wonderful example of how delving into the origin of words teaches us so much about how people lived. It would be interesting to to know how “cloth” turned into “glass” … where would you look for such information?
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Many dictionaries have information on word origins. The American Heritage dictionary is particularly good in this respect, although the Oxford English Dictionary is best, if you have a spare bedroom to hold it, or $700 billion to buy it on CD-ROM.
The Online Eytomology Dictionary at http://www.etymonline.com/
says this about pane:
c.1250, “garment, part of a garment,” later “side of a building, section of a wall,” from O.Fr. pan “piece, panel” (11c.), from L. pannum (nom. pannus) “piece of cloth, garment,” probably cognate with Goth. fana “piece of cloth,” Gk. penos “web.” Sense of “window glass” first attested 1466.
I don’t know whether Online Eytomology Dictionary is any good. Doug Harper obviously was being cute when they came up with a name that would be abbreviated OED. That gives me pause. They claim to have been around since 2001, but the Wayback Machine didn’t know they existed before 2003, and I’d never heard of them until today; if they were doing a good job, I’d think I’d have heard of them before. But I’m willing to give them a chance….
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Harl, Thank you for the references. Online Eyto appears to be a magnificent resource, but I think I’ll wait for your seal of approval. Maybe I should ask for the OED and a spare bedroom for Christmas …
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fast
i was able to crack 31 of them
Hi Amit, 31 is impressive! Very nice work.
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Age:20
14th Grade College Student
(mostly self-taught)
My Results on the World’s ‘Hardest’ Vocabulary Test
(definitions culled from memory alone, no external references of any kind were employed during the test-taking process)
*Correct Answers in my case, must meet the primary definition of the word in question (usu. verbatim) as well as any subsidiary connotations integral to the word itself*…
very strictly graded…
Here are my results
——- Schadenfreude (incorrect)———
1. Defenestration- correct
2 Adumbrate-correct
3. Encomium-correct
4. Blandish-correct
5. Turpitude-correct
6. Fribble-correct
7. Solipsism-correct
8. Captious-correct
9. Protean-correct
10. Tenebrous-correct
11. Otiose-correct
12. Puissant-correct
13. Hegemony-correct
14. Tertiary-correct
———-Bathos—————- (incorrect)
15. Antediluvian-correct
16. Fugacious-correct
17. Sinecure-correct
18. Defalcate-correct
19. Heuristic-correct
20. Quotidian-correct
21. Avuncular-correct
22. Somnolent-correct
23. Juggernaut-correct
24. Recondite-correct
25. Peripatetic-correct
26. Parsimonious-correct
———–Bricolage————- (Incorrect)
27. Punctilio-correct
28. Numinous-correct
———–Grampus—— (incorrect)
29. Transmogrify-correct
———Pismire—— (incorrect)
———Nictitate—– (incorrect)
——— Crenel———-(incorrect)
———- Gravamen——–(incorrect)
30. Insuperable-correct
31. Fungible-correct
32. Putative-correct
33. Palaver-correct
34. Panoply-correct
35. Aplomb-correct
——- Haruspice——– (incorrect)
36. Moribund-correct
——- Foozle———- (incorrect)
37. Nostrum-correct
38. Moil-correct
39. Flagitious-correct
40. Draconian-correct
41. Soporific-correct
—– Aril——– (incorrect)
42. Flivver-correct
43. Jejune-correct
44. Frowzy-correct
45. Canard-correct
46. Qua-correct
46/57~80.7% correct
Julian, Wow – very impressive! Are you thinking about a career in writing or teaching English?
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Knew 22…but I’m Romanian…and our language comes from Latin and Greek and Fr. and etc.
For ex. we use “Somnolent” on a daily basis , also “Adumbrate” and so on.
Great test! – amazed by some words like “Schadenfreude” or amused by “Jejune”.
Iris, That’s a fantastic score, especially since English is not your native language. Thanks for taking the test and providing us a little cultural trivia and feedback!
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hi this is pranay from india
My score is 25 ,I am preparing for GRE