English Vocabulary
I do a
fair amount of reading and recently became somewhat self-conscious about it.
That has made me become, sporadically, far more aware of what those accounts
are composed of: vocabulary in use. Not surprisingly, the number of words I
actually use is a very small fraction of the existent store in English. There
are several categories—more than I would have thought.
[1] The
words that I have been using for many years; I understand them and could define
them.
[2] The
words I understand and could informally define but, as far as I can recollect,
have never
used.
[3] The
words the meaning of which I couldn’t state, but somehow get—or think I do.
[4] Words the meaning of
which I don’t have a clue.
Those categories hold for English and not for all other
languages—a complicated story that I won’t try to tackle.
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