100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know

i didn’t learn about hegemony until college. half the words on this list is either specified for a certain field or is just out of left field. i like it though. gives me something to study. though, i’m pretty sure that this list is a poor representation of what words high school graduates actually do know.

Vocabulary is one of my favorite things to study. Here is how I learn new words the best:

The concept of making a word castle, is rather simple. First, you have to find words that are foreign to you. Then you have to write the definition and part of speech like the verb or noun and the different tenses of the word. When you do this, you start the foundation for learning.

The next step of making a word castle is going to the point of finding the synonyms, antonyms, and the Latin derivitives (or Greek). For example, the Latin derivitive for “nomenclature”, is first, “nomen” which means “name”. Then you have it in a context. The synonyms and antonyms you choose for the word can also be broken apart for their roots. Doing this step is like building the walls and towers.

Finaly, the word castle is almost complete—so to reinforce the concepts in your mind you have to be creative and give it substance. I list a homonym set to help me pronounce the word and then create a drawing myself to use as a key to remember a word. For example, the word “integrity” sound like “integrated”—meaning involved and through every aspect of something. For the wird “Integrity” I thought of and drew a picture of a lion—“Mufasa” from the Lion King actually—as an example of the qualities of a person with integrity. He integrated strong values and morals throughout his character and acted with consistency; Mufasa had integrity.

The point of building a Word Castle is to research a word that you don’t know and find out what the word means by breaking the word apart and giving it’s meanings some sort of memory connection. The assignment of making Word Castles is fun from a learning standpoint, because the lesson is not very dull.

All of the time that you are experimenting with word castles, you should take the time to really work on finding new words that you can create wordcastles with; that way, you are expanding your word base even more. Like building castle walls to make a kingdom stronger, a Word Castle makes your understanding of a word more powerful.

My goal is to look up and memorize the several hundred words that every high school student should know and to plug them into wordcastles. If I can accomplish this goal, then I will be able to reference my words back to my wordcastles. The wordcastles are a fun way to make flash cards, so that you can memorize the words easier. I finished the flashcards for this list and now we can all quiz on them and work on using them in everyday vocabulary.

Word castles can be a great excersize to do daily, as well, because they only take a few moments to do. I have already made my Word Castles on thier own sheets of paper, too, for this list of 100 words, plus another 50 cards/papers based on words I found when looking up the definitions.

I will mark these as “done” when I can say I know each and every word, its definition, context and meaning—and can prove I know them for more than one exam. I am also working on spelling, but that comes later after learning.

Whoever put the photography pictures with each word, cheers to you! They were really good. Good luck everybody, and remember learning is fun.

10 bucks says a pre-med student put this list together.

Oh, and I didn’t bother to read past the last comment, but when you grow up, it may be useful to know what abjure means. Depends on what you plan to do with yourself. You may find ‘their’ vs. ‘there’ tricky now, but you should have that down pretty soon.

I find a number of these interesting choices, because I see them used so very rarely. I’d have placed “Have/of”, “your/you’re”, and the “there” triplets on the list long before “abjure”. Rather than finding words which are used once a month in the New York Times, why not recommend that high school graduates actually learn the words they are going to use in everyday conversations. Truly, how often have you come across “gerrymander” or “loquacious” in everyday life?

the pictures are great

Someone, I won’t presume the reasons why, not only removed the word totalitarian but also deleted it from the site. Please check your lists as you will have to check this word off again. The picture has also been lost.

I will try and keep a better eye on the list from now on. Since it is a definitive list, no changes should be made.

… who decided that the photo for “unctuous” is appropriate? Somehow a random African American photo with this particular word? Too crazy!

N E how…

About the list – I won’t go ahead & use any fancy words here to show everyone how smart I am. I can say this for certain though – how scary if this truly is the list to measure whether or not the average high school student received proper education – cause I can tell you that even though MN is supposed to have a fairly decent education system – our average HS graduate’s vocabulary is no way near this advanced. I don’t even know if the average undergraduate has this sort of vocab.

I have worked in academia a good portion of my adult life & I would dare say that we may have to search further into the grad student pool to reach this level. I agree with someone above who stated that many or most of the words above are not so much vocab – but concepts that all of us as well-rounded & well-informed adult citizens of this republic should know & understand.

Too bad I just don’t think “we” do, on average… as for me, well, the majority of the words I understand as concepts or could readily use in context. But, I am fairly certain that my 18 year old son, who was raised by me & grew up in academia with me, would be hard pressed to identify, pronounce, or properly use more than 10 words in that list – although I am surely going to find out for certain after sending this off. Sad, but true. Yes, he is a high school graduate!

We’ll work on it together I suppose… lol!

I know most of these words but I don’t use them in everyday conversation like I should so I haven’t checked them off. Thanks for the list. It should definitely help me to become more erudite.

I have a ways to go……

I guess I have two years left, and some SAT prep, though.

But, I regonize a lot, just cannot give a definition on cue.

Given how few of them puzzled me I think I need to move on to the 100 words that a college graduate should know.

Or do we break it down into words for associates, bachelors, masters and PHD?

I cast my vote for graduated lists for graduate students.