Xah Lee, 1995,..., 2008.
Are you a word lover? Do you subscribe to a-word-a-day? Are you preparing for SAT or GRE? If yes to any of the above, then you may find this word list useful. Else, do you swoon by the sway of your sensibility? Do you cackle for the pang of nettlesome far-outs? Do you dig the incomprehensible writs of a heart? Then, you need this page.
When I was learning English back in 1989, my methodology was to build a vocabulary and ignore all other aspects of the language. I reasoned that the essence of knowing a language is no more than understanding all the words. So, for the first few years I thumbed through English-Chinese dictionary hundred times a day as the primary means of learning the language. I disregarded any conventions and methodologies such as learning from ESL materials or progression from frequently used words to esoteric or literary vocabularies. (At the time, i did not even know that a language's vocabulary has these different classes. It was a simple naive logical thinking and headstrong will.) Now I know how wrong and inefficient I've been. The habit of writing down words and checking dictionaries nevertheless continued.
This web site contains over five thousand words of pain (with usage examples), loosely grouped into several classes in some 50 files, for my own happiness.
Today's A Word A Day.
Past A-Word-A-Day: words 1, words 2, words 3, words 4, words 5, words 6, words 7, words 8, words 9, words 10, words 11, words 12, words 13, words 14, words 15, words 16, words 17
Words commonly found in magazines or newspapers. A great source for SAT preparation. High school students starts here.
Similar in nature to the SAT group but more difficult. You may find them in GREs (Graduate Record Exams↗). SAT and GRE words are basically words found in journalism. (as opposed to novels or other literatures.)
When i cannot find a categorical basket to put the word in, i dump it here. Writers are the ones to blame for this utter quandary.
What a strung-out tongue-in-cheek booby-trap!
I daresay the forthcoming outlook of a headstrong crackpot is oftentimes a polymath not unlike the foresight of yours truly.
Compound word or portmanteau words. For many of these words, the hyphen eventually dis-appears. For example, email started as e-mail for electronic-mail. (As email becomes infused into household usage, there is a gradual tendency to drop the e in email.
Familiar words with unfamiliar meanings or likely to be misunderstood. For example, a seedy hotel; It's not cricket to cheat at cards; marshal all the relevant facts for the presentation.
Words that looks glaringly foreign. Exempli gratia: de facto, bona fide, ad hoc, voilà, et cetera. From a etymology point of view, most words are foreign anyway.
Iike, more bang for the buck.
Yup! So what's the diff between slang and informal? Often, slang begin as slang, and when they become pop, pundits upgrade them to informal status. Sometimes, dictionaries will disagree on a word status being slang, informal, or standard.
Nouns are the least interesting class, period.
Difficult, obscure, or specialized jargon, but not archaic. Often interesting ones that tickles mentality. Psy. lingoes like Oedipus complex or phallic worship; med. jargons like alexia or neurasthenic; litterateur archaisms like misology and misogyny, what-not esoterica like clepsydra/sextant; sexual technicalities like coitus interruptus or mastectomy; philosophical, philological, or cunnilingual gibberish from dualism to tribadism, from idealism to Dadaism, to theism/atheism/agnosticism, of solipsism to deconstructionism and gaga.
Synonym, paronym, homonym, homophone, homograph, and other kind of nameless nymphs of my fancy.
Some unsorted collection of words.
Words from the Simpsons cartoon, D'oh!↗
Words from William Shakespeare's The Tragedy Of Titus Andronicus.
And here is a word list from Dickens's novel _a Tale of Two Cities_ (532 words) and a 1249 words word list of Romance trash novel Too Much Too Soon (1985) by Jacqueline Briskin, and a word list from some other short fictions: olimpia_reader.html (279 words) , and another one words_old.html (2259 words) compiled around 1990 mostly from novels.
By the way, SAT↗ used to stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test. Then was changed to Scholastic Assessment Test by the movement of social thinking, known as Political Correctness↗. The Aptitude in Scholastic Aptitude basically means brain size. So, if you have a low score, it implicates that you are a moron, which does have some scientific soundness. However, today, it is wrong to call a cripple cripple or a idiot idiot. Also the test and the scoring has mutated significantly since its inception in USA 1926.
SAT is a necessity if you want to engage in pop universities in United States of America. If you can do or did well, fine, but otherwise screw it. There is a book about this controversial test. Recommended: None of the Above: The Truth Behind the SATs, by David Owen. (amazon.com↗) I read the first edition back around 1990. See also reports and analysis by Colin P Fahey, at SAT 2003↗ and SAT 2005↗. He tried to answer all questions incorrectly.
For those of you vocabulary rookies, I can give you a few advice: (1) Princeton Review publishes two books Word Smart (amazon.com↗) and Word Smart II (amazon.com↗) There are quite a few vocabulary books, but I heartily recommend these two. These two contain a selection of just the right words — frequently used but not obscure. They give a brief definition, usage example, and contain a short section that teach you about the roots of English vocabulary. (2) Doesn't matter whether you study words for fun or for exams, a software dictionary on your computer is very convenient: Highlight a word, press a button, and ZAP you see its definition and synonyms. Click on any word and ZAP, you got cross-referenced. If you are in a dictionary look-up binge, just zap, zap, zap, and zaaaap! Almost as fun as shooting aliens. (Take a gander at word_smart_word_list.txt. If you know most of it, you are covered among socialites!)
Vocabulary is only one part of English. You should not learn English by studying words alone unless you are doing it for a short period in preparation for exams. Even if you like words for their own sake, I find that reading well written books or journals are excellent ways to learn all the connotations of words. Personally, I have read cover to cover every issue of Time Magazine↗ from about 1993 to 1995. At first I read it for the purpose of increasing my vocabulary. Gradually, I found the magazine to be informative, and it became my means of understanding the world.
In the past I also fancied that by surveying classical literature that I might be able to master all the SAT type of words. I envision this to have two advantages: (1) that I would have read all the classical literatures I liked. (2) I would have obtained a well-rounded set of vocabulary at a level that I desire. I found out by experience that this assumption is not correct. One could read up all the works of Shakespeare or other classical fictions or non-fictions but still not able to understand much common words or phrases in modern journalism. This is so because English vocabulary is too large. Only a subsection is used in one type of literature.
If you find any mispelling in my list or any other wrong (morally, psychologically, or plainly), please hit me on the head with a digitized book. Seriously, if you like this page, please do send me a email telling me that I am beautiful (sic. Yes, I mean it!). If genie exists, I would wish for possession of supreme beauty. But today, I wish you to tell me so.)
See also:
Page Created:1995. © 1995-2005 by Xah Lee.