http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/booksellers/press_release/100words/

This highly suspect and fairly opinionated article was bought to my attention by Stumbleupon, so I decided to make a little quiz thing out of it.

The editors of the 'American Heritage' dictionaries (aka people I never heard of before) have compiled a list of 100 words they think '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." Right, ok. Whatever.

Don't mind them, they're high on themselves. Anyway, here's the words. Only check the ones you knew before you started the test:

10
[ ] abjure
[ ] abrogate
[ ] abstemious
[ ] acumen
[ ] antebellum
[ ] auspicious
[ ] belie
[ ] bellicose
[X] bowdlerize "I had forgotten this one, but I'm checking it anyway."
[X] chicanery

20
[X] chromosome
[ ] churlish
[ ] circumlocution
[X] circumnavigate
[ ] deciduous
[ ] deleterious
[ ] diffident
[ ] enervate
[X] enfranchise
[X] epiphany

30
[X] equinox
[X] euro
[ ] evanescent
[ ] expurgate
[X] facetious
[ ] fatuous
[ ] feckless
[ ] fiduciary
[X] filibuster
[ ] gamete

40
[X] gauche
[ ] gerrymander
[ ] hegemony
[X] hemoglobin
[ ] homogeneous
[ ] hubris
[X] hypotenuse
[X] impeach
[X] incognito
[X] incontrovertible

50
[ ] inculcate
[X] infrastructure
[ ] interpolate
[X] irony "I could go on and on."
[ ] jejune
[X] kinetic
[ ] kowtow
[ ] laissez faire
[ ] lexicon
[ ] loquacious "I knew what this meant once. The only thing I could think of now was 'loquacious babes.' :/"

60
[ ] lugubrious
[X] metamorphosis
[X] mitosis
[ ] moiety
[X] nanotechnology
[X] nihilism
[X] nomenclature
[ ] nonsectarian
[X] notarize
[ ] obsequious

70
[ ] oligarchy
[X] omnipotent
[ ] orthography
[X] oxidize
[ ] parabola
[ ] paradigm
[X] parameter
[ ] pecuniary
[X] photosynthesis
[X] plagiarize

80
[X] plasma
[X] polymer
[X] precipitous
[X] quasar
[ ] quotidian
[ ] recapitulate
[X] reciprocal
[X] reparation
[X] respiration
[X] sanguine

90
[X] soliloquy
[X] subjugate
[X] suffragist
[ ] supercilious
[X] tautology
[ ] taxonomy
[X] tectonic
[X] tempestuous
[X] thermodynamics
[X] totalitarian

100
[ ] unctuous
[X] usurp
[X] vacuous
[X] vehement
[X] vortex
[ ] winnow
[X] wrought
[X] xenophobe
[X] yeoman "Nice try!! Hah!"
[ ] ziggurat "I knew this one once."

Total: 53

So which do you know, hmm? If you repost this, tag me so I can see.

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By the by, I posit that the word 'meme' should be included in the above! :P

P.S. I may be the only teenager in the world who both knows what irony has meant in the past--that's what they want--and who thinks they should give up and let it mean what it means now. The language changed, deal with it!