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by JauntyHatAngle 3 hours ago
That was fun. Bit confused by the result because it says I was "wow are you stephen fry?" Which I assume meant I did decent. (72K).

But then below it said "you are a man of few words".

I take it the latter is just because I've only done the test once? But it's mixed messaging on first attempt I think.

2 comments

Maybe "few words" means your larger vocabulary lets you use a single word to represent a concept that someone else would need several words to say. But the conversation ends up longer when the other person asks you to define the obscure word you just used.
Combined with the factoid it features under "how is this calculated":

    However, most native speakers have an active vocabulary between 15,000 and 35,000 words.
We must be geniuses, lol.
You almost always going to find people with above average reading and writing skills on an online forum - especially one with such "curated" audience and spartan UI.
That tracks. Active vocabulary means the set of words that someone knows well enough to actually use in their speech or writing.

That's always going to be smaller than the set of words for which a person can choose the correct definition out of four options.