Build Your Vocabulary!

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

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language." If you need to look up the definition or pronunciation of a word, please see the Library's Oxford English Dictionary database.
The following are a few dozen from the 100 word list.

abjure
abrogate
abstemious
acumen
auspicious
belie
bellicose
chicanery
churlish
deleterious
diffident
enervate
epiphany
evanescent
expurgate
facetious
fatuous
feckless
hegemony
homogeneous
hubris
inculcate
infrastructure
irony
jejune
kinetic
loquacious
lugubrious
nihilism
nonsectarian
obsequious
oligarchy
paradigm
parameter
pecuniary
precipitous
quotidian
reciprocal
reparation
sanguine
tautology
thermodynamics
unctuous
vacuous
vehement
vortex
xenophobe