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Comment by JauntyHatAngle | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

You are 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.

There are words that I know from this quiz that I would never use in real life or in my writings. I’m not sure why. That’s the active vocabulary distinction.

For sure there is a bit of selection bias with hackernews users. Not saying we are all geniuses, but I strongly believe we are, at least, more educated than your average Joe

> stephen fry

"May I compartmentalise? I hate to, but may I? may I?"

"Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers"

"...saying the same weary things time after weary time: I love you. Don't go in there. Get out. You have no right to say that. Stop that. Why should I. That hurt. Help. Marjorie is dead"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWpHQQ-wQg (fantastic sketch!)

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