100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know
The editorial staff of the American Heritage Dictionary compiled a list of 100 words every high school graduate should be familiar with. These aren’t words that you’ll be using every day in the language, but they do show that a speaker or writer has, in the editors’ words, a “superior command of the language”.
Let me warn you, though, if you use some of these words, like “churlish” or “jejune”, you’ll end up sounding like Niles from Frazier. That may be a good thing where you come from, but I live in Texas, so it isn’t. (Sorry, Texas, but you know it’s true.)
100 Words To Know
That being said, I was quite interested in see what these 100 words were, so here is the list. See how many of these words you know and can use properly in a sentence. For those which you don’t know the meaning and context, consider adding them to your to-do list on your word-of-the-day exercises. Keep in mind, though, these words have no magical quality in and of themselves, but the editors of American Heritage decided that knowing these words was indicative of a person who has a wide vocabulary.
So learn these words that every high school graduate should know, but then keep learning knew words as you read and build your vocabulary in the years to come. Without further ado, let’s get to the “100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know”.
100 Words To Learn
A – abjure, abrogate, abstemious, acumen, antebellum, auspicious
B – belie, bellicose, bowdlerize
C – chicanery, chromosome, churlish, circumlocution, circumnavigate
D – deciduous, deleterious, diffident
E – enervate, enfranchise, epiphany, equinox, euro, evanescent, expurgate
F – facetious, fatuous, feckless, fiduciary, filibuster
G – gamete, gauche, gerrymander
H – hegemony, hemoglobin, homogeneous, hubris, hypotenuse
I – impeach, incognito, incontrovertible, inculcate, infrastructure, interpolate, irony
J – jejune
K – kinetic, kowtow
L – laissez faire, lexicon, loquacious, lugubrious
M – metamorphosis, mitosis, moiety
N – nanotechnology, nihilism, nomenclature, nonsectarian, notarize
O – obsequious, oligarchy, omnipotent, orthography, oxidize
P – parabola, paradigm, parameter, pecuniary, photosynthesis, plagiarize, plasma, polymer, precipitous
Q – quasar, quotidian
R – recapitulate, reciprocal, reparation, respiration
S – sanguine, soliloquy, subjugate, suffragist, supercilious
T – tautology, taxonomy, tectonic, tempestuous, thermodynamics, totalitarian
U – unctuous, usurp
V – vacuous, vehement, vortex
W – winnow, wrought
X – xenophobe
Y – yeoman
Z – ziggurat
What Words Do I Know?
I was proud to say that I knew the definition and how to use 95 to 98 of these words (I may be overlooking one or two at the moment). Note that 3 are in that middle ground where you’re pretty sure, but not quite. I think anyone will know what I’m talking about when I speak of the three “trouble words” I kind of knew, but wouldn’t feel comfortable using or guessing at unless I looked at a dictionary first.
The I even use a good number of these words in my everyday conversations. I’m assuming most of my readers will know at least as many if not more of the words, but we tend to be people who like words and like adding words to our vocabulary.
In the interest of full disclosure, let me point out the ones that stumped me. There were a few that I would probably want to look up and make certain before using it in context, though most of these, I would know what the meaning of the sentence was if I saw the word used in context. There was only one that I was just not familiar with.
Quotidian – This is the word I had never encountered, or didn’t remember encountering. “Quotidian” has a lot definitions that are generally related. Quotidian means “daily, usual or customary, everyday, ordinary, commonplace, (of a fever, ague) characterized by paroxysms occuring daily, something recurring daily.” Examples used were “a quotidian report” and a “quotidian fever”.
I guess since I never spent time in a classic business office, I never encountered a quotidian report. And I’ve (luckily) never had a chronic illness, so I’ve never had a quotidian fever. So there’s the one word on the list I was completely at a loss to even guess at.
Moeity – Means “one of two equal parts, one of the portions into which something is divided, one of two basic complementary tribal subdivisions”. This is another one I’ve seen and thought I knew, but didn’t quite know the correct meaning was. The etymology of moiety is from medius, medietas and moite, but the first two of those I would not have guessed at, and the third was not a word I was familiar with (Middle English, Anglo-French).
Orthography – Orthography is “The art of writing words with the proper spelling, the correct spelling.” This is one that’s important for our discussions, and no wonder the editors placed it on the list. I had a vague recollection of seeing orthography before and knew it from breaking down the words “ortho-” and “graphy”, since you see ortho (meaning “correct”) in words like orthopedics, orthodontics and orthodox, and since “-graphy” can mean writing or field of study. But this is another one I would have run out to check before using in a sentence.
Abstemious – Means “sparing or moderate in eating and drinking”. This is a word you’ll come across in a lot of 19th century English novels, so I knew the word in context. I wasn’t sure of the absolute definition, though, so I would have looked it up before in conversation.
Unctuous – Means “smooth and greasy in texture or appearance, full of unction, especially revealing or marked by a smug, ingratiating, and false earnestness or spirituality”. Once again, like abstemious, I had encountered this word any number of times and was familiar with one of the two main meanings, but would have referenced a dictionary before using it in writing or conversation.
I would be interested for readers to give their notes. Be honest, now.