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healingmirthTimes readers are literate and well educated. But privately, away from the cocktail party, some of them may wonder: what exactly does “jejune” mean, anyway? If someone put a gun to my head, could I give a precise definition of “atavistic”?
Fortunately, for our online readers, help is readily available. Double-click any word in an article and a question mark appears; click the question mark and you get a definition from the American Heritage dictionary
I did not know that about the clicky looking-up of words! I do most of my NY Times reading on their mobile site, but I might have to change that.
One of the Times blogs published the list of most-looked-up from the last year (including one word which was coined as a joke, and is awesome. I'll leave that to you to figure out.)
1 inchoate
2 profligacy
3 sui generis
4 austerity
5 profligate
6 baldenfreude
7 opprobrium
8 apostates
9 solipsistic
10 obduracy
11 Internecine
12 soporific
13 Kristallnacht
14 peripatetic
15 nascent
16 desultory
17 redoubtable
18 hubris
19 mirabile dictu
20 crèches
21 apoplectic
22 overhaul
23 ersatz
24 obstreperous
25 jejune
26 omertà
27 putative
28 Manichean
29 canard
30 ubiquitous
31 atavistic
32 renminbi
33 sanguine
34 antediluvian
35 cynosure
36 alacrity
37 epistemic
38 egregious
39 incendiary
40 chimera
41 laconic
42 polemicist
43 comity
44 provenance
45 sclerotic
46 prescient
47 hegemony
48 verisimilitude
49 feckless
50 démarche
Published by the NYT Web Analytics Group on May 31, 2010
Without turning this into a meme like those "which books have you read" things I will say that I'm only comfortably familiar with probably half the list, in terms of knowing the meaning well enough to understand in a sentence, and at least 3 or 4 of them I just finally looked up in the past few months after years of skimming over them.
There are probably ten or fewer that I would use in a sentence with any confidence, and at least ten that I have absolutely no idea what they mean. And I read. A lot.
Fortunately, for our online readers, help is readily available. Double-click any word in an article and a question mark appears; click the question mark and you get a definition from the American Heritage dictionary
I did not know that about the clicky looking-up of words! I do most of my NY Times reading on their mobile site, but I might have to change that.
One of the Times blogs published the list of most-looked-up from the last year (including one word which was coined as a joke, and is awesome. I'll leave that to you to figure out.)
1 inchoate
2 profligacy
3 sui generis
4 austerity
5 profligate
6 baldenfreude
7 opprobrium
8 apostates
9 solipsistic
10 obduracy
11 Internecine
12 soporific
13 Kristallnacht
14 peripatetic
15 nascent
16 desultory
17 redoubtable
18 hubris
19 mirabile dictu
20 crèches
21 apoplectic
22 overhaul
23 ersatz
24 obstreperous
25 jejune
26 omertà
27 putative
28 Manichean
29 canard
30 ubiquitous
31 atavistic
32 renminbi
33 sanguine
34 antediluvian
35 cynosure
36 alacrity
37 epistemic
38 egregious
39 incendiary
40 chimera
41 laconic
42 polemicist
43 comity
44 provenance
45 sclerotic
46 prescient
47 hegemony
48 verisimilitude
49 feckless
50 démarche
Published by the NYT Web Analytics Group on May 31, 2010
Without turning this into a meme like those "which books have you read" things I will say that I'm only comfortably familiar with probably half the list, in terms of knowing the meaning well enough to understand in a sentence, and at least 3 or 4 of them I just finally looked up in the past few months after years of skimming over them.
There are probably ten or fewer that I would use in a sentence with any confidence, and at least ten that I have absolutely no idea what they mean. And I read. A lot.
