English - The Real Deal

偶然间看到100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know，一声叹息。至少有一半的词我完全不认识。

The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.

The following is the entire list of 100 words:

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

如果你跟我一样想寻求安慰，看看几则国外网友的留言：

Well, in my second year of college, I haven’t used/heard about 67% of those words.

I think this is just an excuse to try to make graduates feel inferior……

I think the list makers are setting their standards a bit high. In order for a lot of those words to be included, I think they are assuming that high school students have larger vocabularies than they do. I have used much simpler words in conversation with fellow college students and have gotten blank looks.

I’d be very impressed with a high school senior who knew every one of those words: I don’t know if that means Houghton Mifflin has unreasonably high standards, or if education has gone downhill.

Bonus video: Timbaland Presents OneRepublic - Apologize

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Interesting Find. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.