Home/Vocabulary test
How many words do you know?
Fifteen words, from the common to the genuinely obscure. Each one is sampled from a different band of how often it actually appears across the 195 books in this library.
It takes about ninety seconds, and at the end you get an estimate of your vocabulary — and the books that would grow it fastest.
Pick the meaning that fits. If you are not sure, say so — guessing makes the estimate worse, not better.
Your estimated vocabulary
Two questions, and we’ll build you a reading list
What do you most want to read?
How hard do you want it?
Start here
Ordered so the earliest books carry the most new vocabulary for the least reading. Browse everything if you would rather choose yourself.
How the estimate works
Every word in the library was ranked by how often it appears across 18.4 million running words. That ranking was cut into five bands, and you were asked three words from each.
If you know two of three words in a band, you probably know about two thirds of that band. Add those up across all five and you have an estimate. It is the method used by Nation and Beglar’s Vocabulary Size Test, with the bands rebuilt from this library rather than from general English.
Two honest caveats. It counts word forms, so run, runs and running count separately — which is why the number is larger than the roughly 40,000 words research credits an educated adult with. And fifteen questions is a small sample: treat the number as a band, not a measurement.