100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know
The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.
“The words we suggest,” says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, “are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language.”
The following is the entire list of 100 words Every High School Graduate Should Know:
abjure
abrogate
abstemious
acumen
antebellum
auspicious
belie
bellicose
bowdlerize
chicanery
chromosome
churlish
circumlocution
circumnavigate
deciduous
deleterious
diffident
enervate
enfranchise
epiphany
equinox
euro
evanescent
expurgate
facetious
fatuous
feckless
fiduciary
filibuster
gamete
gauche
gerrymander
hegemony
hemoglobin
homogeneous
hubris
hypotenuse
impeach
incognito
incontrovertible
inculcate
infrastructure
interpolate
irony
jejune
kinetic
kowtow
laissez faire
lexicon
loquacious
lugubrious
metamorphosis
mitosis
moiety
nanotechnology
nihilism
nomenclature
nonsectarian
notarize
obsequious
oligarchy
omnipotent
orthography
oxidize
parabola
paradigm
parameter
pecuniary
photosynthesis
plagiarize
plasma
polymer
precipitous
quasar
quotidian
recapitulate
reciprocal
reparation
respiration
sanguine
soliloquy
subjugate
suffragist
supercilious
tautology
taxonomy
tectonic
tempestuous
thermodynamics
totalitarian
unctuous
usurp
vacuous
vehement
vortex
winnow
wrought
xenophobe
yeoman
ziggurat
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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
The response by “suckadick” confuses me. He can use the internet but can’t use a dictionary?
Sad.
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
surprisingly, these words have saved my ass on many occasions.
C’mon. Can’t you all see Suckadik was puling some chicanery and being facetious?
My favorite is euro.
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
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!
Good collection of words. Intelligently picked. It should help people. Good luck!
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.
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 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.
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.)
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.
Why isn’t dipsomaniac on this list?
hemoglobin… should be spelled haemoglobin. look it up if u dont believe me
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.
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.
[...] of the American Heritage dictionaries are putting you to the test. They’ve made a list of the 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know. Your students are not going to learn these words off soda labels or bathroom stalls; you’re [...]
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 ?
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.
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.
This, the original post, is merely an ego trip. A word the author should know: superfluous.
There are two words I personally feel every high school student should know how to use:
Affect
Effect
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 .
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 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.
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?
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