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The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries 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."
The following is the entire list of 100 words:
- abjure
- abrogate
- abstemious
- acumen
- antebellum
- auspicious
- belie
- bellicose
- bowdlerize
- chicanery
- chromosome
- churlish
- circumlocution
- circumnavigate
- deciduous
- deleterious
- diffident
- enervate
- enfranchise
- epiphany
- equinox
- euro
- evanescent
- expurgate
- facetious
- fatuous
- feckless
- fiduciary
- filibuster
- gamete
- gauche
- gerrymander
- hegemony
- hemoglobin
- homogeneous
- hubris
- hypotenuse
- impeach
- incognito
- incontrovertible
- inculcate
- infrastructure
- interpolate
- irony
- jejune
- kinetic
- kowtow
- laissez-faire
- lexicon
- loquacious
- lugubrious
- metamorphosis
- mitosis
- moiety
- nanotechnology
- nihilism
- nomenclature
- nonsectarian
- notarize
- obsequious
- oligarchy
- omnipotent
- orthography
- oxidize
- parabola
- paradigm
- parameter
- pecuniary
- photosynthesis
- plagiarize
- plasma
- polymer
- precipitous
- quasar
- quotidian
- recapitulate
- reciprocal
- reparation
- respiration
- sanguine
- soliloquy
- subjugate
- suffragist
- supercilious
- tautology
- taxonomy
- tectonic
- tempestuous
- thermodynamics
- totalitarian
- unctuous
- usurp
- vacuous
- vehement
- vortex
- winnow
- wrought
- xenophobe
- yeoman
- ziggurat
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