How many words do you know but never use?

Some clever folks analysed Shakespeare’s writings and came up with the following conclusion:

This means that in addition the 31,534 words that Shakespeare knew and used, there were approximately 35,000 words that he knew but didn’t use. Thus, we can estimate that Shakespeare knew approximately 66,534 words.

-Source

Some other clever fellow says that the average English speaker possesses a vocabulary of 10,000-20,000 words, but only uses a fraction of that (somewhere around a sixth). [Source]

Why not take this test and see how many of the specially selected 100 words you know. It’s multiple choice (and no, the answer is never D) and self-grading (you have to count your correct answers to get your percentage). I scored  72%, which would have been much lower without my knowledge of Italian (because it is closer to Latin).

Go on, take the test!

It’s a pleonasm!

A few days ago, I wondered about calling those gadgets portable MP3 players.

Apart from there being non-portable MP3 players, another reason why it isn’t a tautology may be because it is a pleonasm.

A tautology

A radio host for a programme I regularly listen to often invites listeners who may have missed part of the show to go to the related website and download the programme onto their “portable MP3 player”. I wonder, is there any other type? Aren’t all MP3 players, in and of themselves, portable?

Sure sounds like tautology to me!

10 words I’ve learned in the last 10 weeks

Way back when I was in primary school, I’d learn new words that I’d subsequently use in writing compositions. We actually got marks for the number of big words we used, and so the tendency was to stuff in as many as possible. Nowadays, I’ve no outlet for any of the big words I learn—none that is, except this blog. Here goes:

1. Hendiadys
2. Syzygy (One episode of X-Files is titled Syzygy)
3. Bathetic
4. Venal
5. Apophthegm
6. Parlous
7. Aposiopesis
8. Anodyne
9. Paraleipsis
10. Apophasis

I am greatly satisfied to see red squiggly spell-checker  lines under #s 1, 2, 5, 7, 9 and 10!

I eat ghoti

Allow me to explain to you how to pronounce that last word:

‘gh’ as in enough

‘o’ as in women

‘ti’ as in nation

There you have it, another way to spell ‘fish’. Sort of.