Saturday, August 28, 2010

Saturday Pedantry.

Think you know words?  Well, there are folks out there determined to prove you wrong.  And they're leaving me with a choice of either accepting that I don't know as much as I think I do, or just telling them they're full of crap.

Knowing myself as well as I do, I think the latter is more likely.  Here's a couple of opportunities for you to go up against the Big Heads.

First, a series of word, grammar and punctuation tests.  There are 10 questions in each quiz with multiple choice options to fill in the blank.  I took the first 10 quizzes, which are each rated as easy or moderately difficult.  My results:

Quiz 1: 7 of 10 Easy
Quiz 2: 10 of 10 Easy
Quiz 3:  8 of 10 moderate
Quiz 4: 6 of 10  moderate
Quiz 5:  9 of 10 moderate
Quiz 6: 9 of 10 moderate
Quiz 7: 9 of 10 moderate
Quiz 8: 9 of 10 moderate
Quiz 9: 7 of 10 easy
Quiz 10: 5 of 10 moderate

A couple of things may be worth noting.  1.  In a few instances, I think more than one of the answers might have been equally correct, but the test defaults in favor of simplicity.  1. I'm betting Conservatives do worse on the test, since they'll spend more time fuming over the wording of the test questions.

Second, Cracked.com has "9 Words That Don't Mean What You Think They Mean".  I have to admit I got caught on a few of them -- they totally got me on the meaning of peruse.  I'm also repeatedly shocked to discover that Cracked.com is actually a worthy authority on anything.  It does weird things to my worldview. (They do, however, take the sting out of being all smart and stuff by filling the article with boobs.)

3 comments:

Tom said...

Pristine does not mean ancient!

But I'm glad 3 of the 4 biggest dicks were Bill O'Reilly, Michael Moore, and Tom Cruise. I didn't have a clue who 8 was. :)

Eric said...

P.S.

Also, note that the third definition of "enormity" at Dictionary.com is exactly what everybody thinks it means: "enormous." Maybe the biggest of the dicks should be the author of the Cracked article.

Nathan said...

Pristine does mean in an original and unsullied condition. It does imply surviving for a period of time in that condition.

And, yes...Bonaduce is kindof a dick.