The 20 Least-Known Words In English

We recently wrote about the words women don't know that men do and vice versa.

But the meanings of some words confuse people of both genders.

The Center for Reading Research analyzed the first 480,000 results of Ghent University's online vocabulary test and found the words English speakers know the least. Actually, people didn't think they were words at all.

In the online vocabulary test, 100 letter sequences - which may or may not be real English words - flash across the takers' screens. Pressing the "j" (instead of "f") key indicates the participants know the word exists in English, even if they don't understand it. The test strongly penalizes participants for marking they know a word that doesn't exist.

Fewer than 3% of participants marked they knew the 20 English words below. We included simplified definitions and parts of speech in the parenthesis.

• genipap (n., fruit)
• futhorc (n., Runic alphabet, which was used before the Latin alphabet)
• witenagemot (n., Anglo-Saxon political council)
• gossypol (n., toxic pigment that inhibits sperm production)
• chaulmoogra (n., Asian tree)
• brummagem (adj., cheap and showy)
• alsike (n., clover)
• chersonese (n., peninsula)
• cacomistle (n., raccoon-like animal)
• yogh (n., Middle English letter)
• smaragd (adj., emerald-like)
• duvetyn (adj., soft, velvety fabric)
• pyknic (adj., short, stocky)
• fylfot (n., a swastika)
• yataghan (n., Turkish sword)
• dasyure (n., small marsupial)
• simoom (n., strong, hot wind)
• stibnite (n., mineral)
• kalian (n., tobacco pipe)
• didapper (n., a type of bird)

For some context, our content management system recognizes none of the words. It's trying to autocorrect "cacomistle" to "Jagermeister," "smaragd" to "smeared," and "dasyure" to "desire."

It's not surprising that most of these words are nouns. As a part of speech, nouns have less unifying characteristics than, let's say adjectives, which often end in -able or -ible, -ful, -ous, and other suffixes. That could play into participants' recognition.

Some of the words are also quite old (like "yogh," which entered English around the year 1300,) and foreign in origin (like "simoom," which stems from Arabic).

Lastly, 8.3% of participants on average endorsed "fake" words in the online test. That means more people admitted to knowing a word which doesn't exist than recognizing these 20 words that do.