So the editors of the American Heritage dictionaries have put up a list of 100 words every high school graduate should know. They say if you know these words then you probably have a good command of the language. That’s debatable because knowing the words don’t mean you can put them together nicely. But I digress.
I took it as a challenge to see which ones I knew and you can see my attempt below. Took me about 1 hour and 20 minutes to come up with the answers (minus 10 minutes for a phone call) and I haven’t checked it for accuracy. You should try it and see how many you can get before reading my answers.
If my attempt is any indication, good luck trying to get high school grads to know all the meaning of these words. Some of them I didn’t know till after I was an undergrad. And in the end, isnt that what dictionaries are for – so i don’t have to remember what they mean?
But read on for the words and how I defined them. 
12:07am
abjure –
abrogate – to be rid of
abstemious –
acumen – good sense
antebellum – before ze war
auspicious – buy this number!! kidding. it means very good signs?
belie – contradicts what is known
bellicose – wanting to war
bowdlerize -
chicanery – Montoya on a racetrack. No. Um. dirty schemes.
chromosome – that genetic stuff that contains DNA
churlish – bitchy
circumlocution – the opposite of brevity
circumnavigate – to go all the way around
deciduous –
deleterious – hahaha. damaging.
diffident – I know this but I dont know it. ARGH.
enervate – thank you rowling, life draining.
enfranchise – given (voting?) priveleges
epiphany – a revelation
equinox – equal daytime and nighttime
euro – currency, or of relating to europe i spose
evanescent – ephemereal
expurgate –
facetious – flippant!
fatuous – hahahaha. k, moving on.
feckless – irresponsible
fiduciary – relating to law?
filibuster – something you do to prevent a bill from being passed
gamete – it’s a biology thing relating to reproduction
gauche –
gerrymander – manipulation in politics
hegemony – a majority of one race in a place?
hemoglobin – that red stuff in your blood
homogeneous – like, the same.
hubris – Bush Administration.
hypotenuse – the longest line in a right angle triangle
impeach – what we should do to Bush
incognito – in disguise, on the down low
incontrovertible – cannot be disputed
inculcate – to teach, but in a more insidious manner
infrastructure – the things that make a society; roads, buildings, etc.
interpolate – to put something between two poles (just guessing)
irony – not alanis.
jejune –
kinetic – movement
kowtow – to kiss ass (or, literally to bang yer head against the floor)
laissez faire – a fantasy. ok – free market
lexicon – a group of words?
loquacious – someone who speaks too much
lugubrious –
metamorphosis – transformation
mitosis – wtf is with all this biology shit. the separation of cells. I don’t know how it’s different from miosis so dont ask!
moiety –
nanotechnology – relating to tech of very very small machinery
nihilism – a pointless existence, don’t believe in anything, useless
nomenclature – a system of names
nonsectarian – not related to any religious sect
notarize – make a document legal (Charlie Brown!!!)
obsequious – to listen to authority
oligarchy – rule by many
omnipotent – to be almighty
orthography –
oxidize – chemical change, to become oxygen
parabola – a big nice curve?
paradigm – err.. an influential thought or theory
parameter – a border surrounding an object, a set of rules
pecuniary – relating to monies
photosynthesis – that thing that happens for plants to make food using sunlight
plagiarize – to steal, yo
plasma – I shuutt u wif my plasma gun.. pew! pew! it’s that stuff that tv’s made of 
polymer – uh, many many molecules to make one very complex one?
precipitous – very dramatic, cliffhanger
quasar – a star like object in space
quotidian – the norm, everyday
recapitulate – to say it again, briefly
reciprocal – you scratch my back, i scratch yours
reparation – things done to make up for damage, hurt caused to someone
respiration – breathe
sanguine – bloody
soliloquy – crazy rant from a person
subjugate – make someone your bitch
suffragist – person campaigning for rights to vote
supercilious – snobbish
tautology –
taxonomy – classification
tectonic – plates we stand on
tempestuous – rageful
thermodynamics – the study of heat and energy
totalitarian – one nation under a chimp
unctuous – a suckup
usurp – overthrow
vacuous – empty
vehement – strongly
vortex – a swirling.. thing
winnow -
wrought – plagued? or like.. wrought iron gates?
xenophobe – someone who has a fear of foreigners
yeoman – … ship.. type.. person..
ziggurat – tall, sharp thingy
1:31am
so, if even by very lenient terms, a score of 40 means going back to high school?
They’re academics. And by definition, out of touch with reality.
They are also assuming that Americans speak English. Americans don’t speak English. Americans speak American.
i saw this list a while back. I think it’s rubbish. It’s very biology/science jargon skewed. (randomly, I thought it was funny that you didn’t know deciduous cuz it’s one of those things I’d be likely to ask you…like…do you have cows in malaysia?? Deciduous is a type of tree. I cant remember if it’s the kind that loses leaves/needles each season or the kind that doesn’t.)
Lists, by their very nature, are subjective. They editors did say it isn’t meant to be “exhaustive” but as a “benchmark”. At least this one isn’t as out of touch as the one about the top 10 books people couldn’t do without. Jane Eyre, really???
Interesting responses. My question is what words should editors who are in touch with reality include in a list that high school grads should know?
And.. I can’t tell ash from oak. Therefore ‘decidous’ isn’t likely to be something I use.