Did you see the “100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know” that the makers of The American Heritage Dictionary are touting? It’s a pretty good list, actually, although such an enterprise is always going to be a bit random. I confess there are more than a few terms (mostly science-related, e.g. “gamete“) that I would not be able to define to my own satisfaction.
I decided to run the words through The Complete New Yorker to see if The New Yorker “knew” them all. Sure, you’re thinking, it’s everything since 1925! They’ll all come up dozens of times, silly! But ah, I could counter, it’s only abstracts and keywords and hastily typed summaries we’re talking about here.
Anyway, it turns out that the CNY balked on seven words. I find it very suspicious that two of the words it didn’t “know” were “suffragist” and “enfranchise.”
Which of these words do you think would produce the most interesting set of results? The comments section awaits your opinion.
Here are the results. The winner, with yards to spare, was a surprise to me, as was the margin.
irony 435
totalitarian 59
infrastructure 52
wrought 48
metamorphosis 47
epiphany 39
hubris 32
lexicon 30
equinox 28
filibuster 27
kinetic 27
paradigm 25
nomenclature 22
euro 20
hegemony 20
impeach 20
obsequious 19
nihilism 18
soliloquy 18
vortex 17
gauche 16
incognito 16
reciprocal 16
facetious 15
vehement 13
bellicose 12
diffident 12
homogeneous 12
incontrovertible 12
precipitous 12
acumen 11
chromosome 11
feckless 11
lugubrious 11
tempestuous 11
auspicious 10
chicanery 10
fatuous 10
omnipotent 10
sanguine 10
tectonic 10
vacuous 10
fiduciary 9
respiration 9
abstemious 8
loquacious 8
plasma 8
taxonomy 8
antebellum 7
circumnavigate 7
deleterious 7
gerrymander 7
unctuous 7
yeoman 7
evanescent 6
kowtow 6
oligarchy 6
plagiarize 6
polymer 6
quotidian 6
supercilious 6
usurp 6
photosynthesis 5
reparation 5
belie 4
churlish 4
nanotechnology 4
nonsectarian 4
orthography 4
winnow 4
abjure 3
deciduous 3
hemoglobin 3
hypotenuse 3
parameter 3
ziggurat 3
laissez faire 2
recapitulate 2
tautology 2
thermodynamics 2
abrogate 1
bowdlerize 1
circumlocution 1
enervate 1
gamete 1
inculcate 1
jejune 1
mitosis 1
oxidize 1
parabola 1
pecuniary 1
quasar 1
subjugate 1
enfranchise 0
expurgate 0
interpolate 0
moiety 0
notarize 0
suffragist 0
xenophobe 0
Notes:
* A friend observes: “Jejune” is the month after “Mimay.”
* I don’t really see why anyone needs to know the words “yeoman” and “moeity” in 2007. [I’d argue for “yeoman,” used sparingly, but what would George Orwell say about some of these slovenly Latinate clunkers? —Ed.]
* “Quasar” has one hit—in which it is mentioned as a difficult word that nobody knows. It’s a cartoon from the 8/21/1965 issue by Alan Dunn. Mother to inquisitive son: “If you want to know what a quasar is, I’d say you’ve come to the wrong person.”
* A story in the current issue (June 4, 2007) explicitly refers to “sanguine” as a difficult word, the kind of word someone would look up in a dictionary. In fact, Karl Rove looks it up in a dictionary.
* For me, the big shockeroo is the total for “wrought.”
—Martin Schneider