Shock to the system

I've always considered myself a lover of words, an avid devourer or all things literary and linguistic.

Yeah, suddenly, not feeling all that much of a proper word nerd.

There s very nifty little test out there that some clever people doing research into average vocabularies have set up. It's quick and simple, and you can take it over here.

So I'm happily clicking along – 'Yes, I know what that means, yes, that one too' – and then out of nowhere somewhere on the second page they hit you with the a few columns of words I'd never even seen, let alone knew a definition for ('Fuliginous' anyone? 'Sparge'? 'Braggadocio'? 'Terpsichorean'? Yeah, I thought so).

I hate feeling inadequate. Anyway, here's what they told me in the end, which looked all exciting and impressive at first but apparently actually places me nice and firmly on the 'average' pile. Oh well.

Although, you just know I'm going to spend the greater part of this afternoon looking up all the words I didn't know, so perhaps I'm a bonafide word nerd after all.