100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know

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Hey, I am a writer and I must admit that a lot of those I would never use (and a few I do not know).

I am slowly putting together my own stock of words from various resources:

http://cchogan.com/useful-word-alternatives/

I know like 15 of these yet I am 10 so.

That is a great list!

These are words you should know… we’re not going to say why you should know them or even provide definitions… this article is the definition of supercilious while being absolutely useless.

Eh, about 60%. Not bad for a mid west education.

good to know

This is a fucking stupid list. I graduated high school 2 years ago and probably used two of those words ever AND still managed to get laid.

Hum you should put definitions. Google, really, nobody got time fo’ that.

Wtf !!! is it because Im Afrikaans speaking that I dont know more than half these words ? Does an English speaking person know ALL these words ? Please let me know or its back to school for me !!!!!

hmm It’s nice that you share some nice information! But you should also give us some link to find out the meaning of these words! Thanks

Funny thing … just copied these to Word … says there are 101 words (not 100)!  Sounds to me like someone needs to retake 1st grade math – lol 

Who makes up these lists?  A professor who hasn’t been in school for 28 years?  I don’t know the definitions of over half of them  yet I am a graduate student working on my masters degree and a heavy reader.  Pretentious, “academic” words do not make writing better.  

The word is “Homogenous” (and “Heterogenous”). Oscar Wilde was a homogeneous, Einstein was a heterogeneous.

Where’s the definition.
There are no links to find the definitions.
It would help a lot.

100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know
very good site …..www.askinterview.com

Good list but some are easy.

Good list but some are really easy.

Man, I wholeheartedly agree that learning new words and expanding your vocabulary is a fantastic thing to do, (I mean why not? What’s the harm in that?) I do agree with the majority on this one. Expanding your mind is great, but when you come off pretentious and condescending, it doesn’t get you very far, in fact it scares most people away.
From personal experience, I’m a high school graduate who’s taken some time off before college. I currently work in a fast food joint. Sometimes in regular conversation I’ll use a word that to me, isn’t a big deal. Yet some of my coworkers may need a bit of an explaination. It’s not because they’re dumb, they just have no use for knowing such things. So in the end I try to use laymans terms most of the time.
I guess what I’m saying is yeah, go ahead, read a dictionary, get word a day sent to your inbox, just don’t be a dick about. Then everyones happy

Yall are fucking stupied this is a waste of time i Hate this fucking

😀

These words are waaay too easy!!! You should choose harder words for students to learn!!!!

i hate you, you manipulative bitch.

i am a yr 11 student… and i actually know a fair few of these words… but that doesnt mean that i will use them. when people want you to write them something, the words you use dont really count for too much. it is the way you write that matters. if you can make something beautiful out of simple language, then you are probable a better linguist. but hey, my views might change when i start university. you dont need big fancy words to be a good linguist.

i knew 74 of those and i’m in my second semester of freshman year. is that bad?

You shouldn’t know all of these words many of them are useless to you unless you come across them when reading. Your vocabulary will not make or break you success, although having a good vocabulary may help :_

Agree with Godspeed You!. Maybe in a perfect world for English teachers these would be words every HS student should learn; but the reality is students will never come across the majority of words on this arbitrary list. Thanks, but I’ll continue to use “unsophisticated” words like upbeat instead of sanguine.

More important for students to learn how to construct sentences than learn obscure vocab. Do you see some of these office emails/whatever that get sent out? Vocab won’t help crappy structure.

I would be surprised if more than 5% of high school graduates, in any region of the planet, could use each and every one of these words correctly in a sentence.

I think that I see the point that some of you argumentative people are trying to make, although I use these possibly pretentious words, all the time. (seriously… although still LOL)

IMHO, these word lists are most annoying (highfaluting, perhaps?) because learning a language one word at a time is most unproductive… even your native language. Words almost always act together, as a team, in complete sentences and paragraphs, with added nuances of meaning, sometimes called figures of speech, literary allusions, or idioms. Most students learn very little by memorizing definitions, one word at a time.

Well then, why do so many educators focus on learning separate “words” from a list. Well… it’s easier for the educators who write (and later analyze the results from) those confounded standardized tests. Statisticians have observed that students who “test out” to have large vocabularies are correlated with high academic achievement. However, that does not mean, conversely, that teaching a lot of words, one at a time, will educate students. (But that digresses to an entirely separate essay, on the scientific design of statistically valid research experiments, that lead to reasonably valid conclusions… LOL, but true.)

Unfortunate consequence is that our educational institutions can’t get out of the paradigm of teaching to the tests. Perhaps it’s the undue influence of sports in education. We want to see a scoreboard, with a clear numerical evaluation of the value of our efforts, our progress to date.

Instead, Grasshopper, try to take the pebble… The point is, that I can offer no alternative, no advice except read widely, of literature that is just within your grasp, not too easy, and at the same time, not too hard to understand. Perhaps, that is where our educational institutions let us down. Each grade and classroom gets the same textbook… one size fits all.

Please, offer your comments… concurrence or rebuttal. (reasoned, of course, as I am a proletarian grease monkey, in reality; yet a college professor, manque… LOL)

Most of these words are really big words. Dictionary is our best friend.

the problem with this list is that some of the words, yes high school graduates should know them. some of the words on this list, however, are a bit much.

I use half of these on a daily basis with my friends. None of us put effort into it. Heck no one is taking English courses in university either, I only got my highschool degree too. What makes me wonder is why is “euro” , “parabola”, and “irony” in there? I doubt you can get out of middle school not knowing those…

It is sad that every time someone talks about gaining knowledge, we turn around and call them elitist.

It’s the concepts you should know, not just the words.

Haha. Elitists, step down off your high horses. You’re making a mockery of yourselves.

It is not too difficult to see why most of the above have trouble with the words in the list. They seem to have trouble with any words over fourletters, especially the first writer. Here are a few words more in line with their intelligence: cat, dog, up, like…etc.

Yes, I think premeditatively using words like these to impress people makes you look like a jerk-off. However, if you can use a word in a clever way, to say something succinctly (which might need hordes of other words to convey a similar meaning), then I think using them is great.

They can also create metaphors pretty well.

Penny Arcade’s writer does this well:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/4/10/

If I may interpolate here- many of the bellicose and lugubrious comments (some crudely wrought and supercilious, others merely tempestuous and vehement, still others vacuous) above do make a point through inculcation if not by use of sound arguments or strong orthography. A moiety are on the mark. It is incontrovertible that a strong command of any language allows one to speak without diffidence. Yet this demands proper grammar usage as well as the use of a vast lexicon. Indeed, the hubris possessed by those who use obscure nomenclature simply to demonstrate that they have a vocabulary make them appear unctuous, not omnipotent. I agree with the fellow who suggested a quotidian routine of learning. I am feeling sanguine about the soundness of my comment and I will not abjure.

1984!

I love the supporters or Newspeak who came along to voice their opinions. It was really plus good of them to do so.

f you want to be a successful novelist or writer for an intellectual crowd then it’s great to have a huge vocab, but otherwise what help does it lend you?

http://www.collegefastbreak.com/

I do not believe a stifled vocabulary services anyone particularly well. It is true that toning down pompous and sprawling vernacular faux pas’ will allow for better engagement with unpretentious peoples, but, in order to best understand jackasses who will not return the favour (the actually pompous and socially retarded) a person must arm themselves with some rudimentary dazzlers. Unless, it is of course jargon, those highly specialized and often redundant phrases or words that fit only within the niche of certain branches of knowledge. That being said, this list blows.

Vortex? Quasar? Equinox? Nanotechnology? Thermodynamics? Oxidize?
Parabola? Really? How many opportunities will present themselves in which the average high school graduate can wistfully fling around this beautiful lexicon of jargon? Comprehension of the fields these words are used within is far more important than the words themselves. Name-dropping this garbage outside the chosen field is for either comedic affect/effect (depending on circumstance) or intercontextualization within academic fields.

More than two thirds of these should not be spoken outside of highly specialized sectors. I am trying to think of a simple term to sum this up. What is the name of the word that means you are using a term incorrectly?

=p

Auspicious list? I abjure, or do I abdicate? What is this an episode of the Gilmour Girls or Frasier? You decide.

*hint*
One is funny on purpose, the other isn’t.

NeedsRelease makes a good point there are so many people who use those two incorrectly. Just as so many people use You’re and Your incorrectly. And these are basic English mistakes.

I agree with the others who said we should be teaching logic and how to apply it instead of having kids memorize a bunch of useless bullshit. History’s a good example, instead of having kids memorize what happened teach them how to analyze the situation so that they may see how complex a certain situation can be .

There are two words I personally feel every high school student should know how to use:

Affect
Effect

This, the original post, is merely an ego trip. A word the author should know: superfluous.

100 words every high school graduate should know? Bullshit. I write for a living, and I’ve *never* had to use 20 words to replace the word ‘abjure’. And while a more bellicose response might be to say that this list enfranchises the supercilious with circumlocution, a closer look at Steven’s (and I bet he insists that you call him ‘Steven’, not ‘Steve’) title reveals that this list simply intends to sell dictionaries to the rest of us poor schlubs that have to listen to such gauche hubris.

End soliloquy.

Bullshit. I write for a living, and I’ve *never* had to use 20 words to replace the word ‘abjure’. And while a more bellicose response might be to say that this list enfranchises the supercilious with circumlocution, a closer look at Steven’s (and I bet he insists that you call him ‘Steven’, not ‘Steve’) title reveals that this list simply intends to sell dictionaries to the rest of us poor schlubs that have to listen to such gauche hubris.

End soliloquy.

There isn’t much point starting on learning that list until you are using what you already know of the English language correctly.

Thankfully, the people commenting here seem to have a grasp on the English language, but such a vast portion of the Internet is populated by people who don’t know their “there” from their “they’re”. How do these people survive in this world with such a poor command of their native language ?

Isn’t it more effective to communicate using 20 words everyone know than 1 word only 20% of the people know. I’m not arguing with the list as it may be good touchstone. I’m just arguing with the above logic.

Using these words is not being elitist, it is being an effective communicator. Using 20 words to say what could be said in 1 is being either boorish or condescending.

hemoglobin… should be spelled haemoglobin. look it up if u dont believe me

Why isn’t dipsomaniac on this list?

It depends completely on the setting and job, but I’d guess that only in the rarest professions would anyone use 95% of these words. In my thinking, only a pompous ass would throw these words around knowing that most people wouldn’t know the meaning.

The point is, *others* will be using these words out in the real world. It might be pedantic, but knowing the definition of “deleterious” might come in handy one day.

Anyway, big words look good when it comes to academic papers.

(Gauche is usually used to mean someone has committed some social faux pas.
Nothing wrong with knowing some French.)

I think it’s far more important to use proper grammar than to try to impress anyone with a list such as this. It’s rather pedantic, I think and I don’t know why people need to use big words when a diminutive one will do.

Make sure you know what a polymer is just in case Dupont shows up out of the blue to your house. Make sure you know what a yeoman is just in case you ever build your own time machine. Make sure you know what gauche ia, cause saying left is sooo 2007.

I understand we should strive for knowledge but what’s the point in knowing so many words that NOBODY knows. I do know a fair bit of these but come on, what makes xenophobe so important that it’s on this list?! People appreciate when you can talk specifically and intellectually with common words, that’s true skill. On the other hand you have pricks with a superiority complex who want to use many of the words on this list to differentiate themselves when it’s not even impressive. You don’t see Noam Chomsky using these words. The American education system is so flawed, emphasizing memorization rather than teaching people how to actually use logic, think, and apply knowledge to new situations. Fill in the blank and multiple choice tests, pfff. I went to school in Australia for 3 years which isn’t even known for great education but you actually learned to think and write rather than memorize what year Hiroshima was bombed in. In science you could memorize every paragraph verbatim, but if you couldn’t apply what you learned to totally new situations on the tests, you would make a C. So go ahead and memorize what hemoglobin is.

Good collection of words. Intelligently picked. It should help people. Good luck!

Stupid cat is being stupid. (and I think he feels a little threatened that someone has caught on that it isn’t an accident!)

Poo-poo face! You words stupid! I talk OOOH-KAAY! YOU the stupid-head.

Poo on you and you jejune too!

here is more than a word you should know. fuck yourself …biggest load of shit i have ever seen in my life……7 children an air line pilot should be familiar with……4 teabags a mentally upset should be loosely habitual with…………just as pointless bullshit as 100 words EVERY high school gaduatre should know……….coc

My favorite is euro.

C’mon. Can’t you all see Suckadik was puling some chicanery and being facetious?

surprisingly, these words have saved my ass on many occasions.

Hey suckadick, try a word a day. Then probably you will know why you need to know these 100 words… check it out.. will be totally worth it come SATs and LSATs and all the other good verbal stuff

The response by “suckadick” confuses me. He can use the internet but can’t use a dictionary?

Sad.

this site is stupid it doesn’t even tell you what those words mean, thanks for telling me a list of words that have no meaning towards me