English Words for Advanced Foreign Learners

[pau17]

Most of those are idiomatic expressions, and their understanding is entirely different from vocabulary.

He said idioms and proverbs too.

 

[GinandTonic]

I suck at languages so I'm not having a go, but...

Allow me to clarify. Please post in this thread any words you, as a native speaker of the English language, should know. I am not talking about the basic vocabulary (*car*, *door*, *food*), we will take those for granted. We will bypass intermediate vocabulary as well. I would like to focus on advanced vocabulary, not specialized. These can all be looked up in any decent dictionary, I am not talking about the most exotic words you can come up with. I would like to know some words you use every now and then that will usually draw a blank from foreigners.

Some examples:

misogynist - anti-female
adamantine - harder than steel
chagrin - worry

Thanks from the second language portion of this forum.

PS: proverbs and idioms are welcome as well, of course.

Misogynist - hating or possibly fearful of women. While lit just anti-woman, in common usage a rather strong term.

I felt this needed to be elaborated on:

cha·grin /ʃəˈgrɪn/ verb, -grined or -grinned, -grin·ing or -grin·ning.
–noun
1. a feeling of vexation, marked by disappointment or humiliation.
–verb (used with object)
2. to vex by disappointment or humiliation: The rejection of his proposal chagrined him deeply.
3. Obsolete. shagreen (def. 1).

n. A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance or embarrassment, caused by failure, disappointment, or a disconcerting event: To her chagrin, the party ended just as she arrived.

Only ever really heard 1-2.

 

[Mirc]

Only ever really heard 1-2.

Same here. It's a French word and I know it since before knowing what "disappointment" means (really). Yet I've never heard of sense 3...

 

[scherbchen]

huh... I apologize for not being precise enough.

I wanted words beyond the basic SAT level. anything with roots in either greek and/or latin will be open to anyone with any education in those languages or to anyone talking a language that has been effected by the age of humanism (as being mentioned by Mirc).

The examples I gave were bad, I blame myself.

How about we focus on truly English words (to scupper, toff, lenient, chagrined) no matter the roots. wors that are not self-explanatory given a humanistic education.

*toff* for example is something a foreigner would not get.

 

[GinandTonic]

Most of those are idiomatic expressions, and their understanding is entirely different from vocabulary.


A good word to know in America s y'all, it's a simple contraction of you all (the pronoun "ihr" in German, Scherben).

myriad - an uncountably high number of something

example: There are myriad windows in New York City.

maxim - an objective rule

For example, there are many military maxims, such as "march divided, fight concentrated" or "no plan survives contact with the enemy."

implacable - lacking the ability to be calmed

IIRC myriad is an archaic number now co-opted to mean an uncountably high number. Greek historian counting x myriads of persians or sum such. Five thousand or something.

huh... I apologize for not being precise enough.

I wanted words beyond the basic SAT level. anything with roots in either greek and/or latin will be open to anyone with any education in those languages or to anyone talking a language that has been effected by the age of humanism (as being mentioned by Mirc).

The examples I gave were bad, I blame myself.

How about we focus on truly English words (to scupper, toff, lenient, chagrined) no matter the roots. wors that are not self-explanatory given a humanistic education.

*toff* for example is something a foreigner would not get.

Knackered. Tired or worn out. From "fit only for the knackers yard", where horses were turned to glue.

"I'm knackered, I've been on my feet all day"

"This alternator is knackered, you'll have to get a new one".

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

That's quite different to what I would expect it to be. Thanks.

To placate means to calm, so the prefix "im" or "in" denotes the antonym. Thus, implacable is the opposite of placable. Another example is indefatigable, meaning "unable to tire," with the root being defatigate, or "to tire."

 

[Lillefix]

Most of those are idiomatic expressions, and their understanding is entirely different from vocabulary.


A good word to know in America s y'all, it's a simple contraction of you all (the pronoun "ihr" in German, Scherben).

myriad - an uncountably high number of something

example: There are myriad windows in New York City.

maxim - an objective rule

For example, there are many military maxims, such as "march divided, fight concentrated" or "no plan survives contact with the enemy."

implacable - lacking the ability to be calmed

Correct me if I'm wrong, English isn't my native language, but I find it far more natural to say "There is A myriad OF windows in New York City". Am I totally wrong?

 

[Disenfrancised]

huh... I apologize for not being precise enough.

I wanted words beyond the basic SAT level. anything with roots in either greek and/or latin will be open to anyone with any education in those languages or to anyone talking a language that has been effected by the age of humanism (as being mentioned by Mirc).

The examples I gave were bad, I blame myself.

How about we focus on truly English words (to scupper, toff, lenient, chagrined) no matter the roots. wors that are not self-explanatory given a humanistic education.

*toff* for example is something a foreigner would not get.

Lenient is latin derived . But are you asking for modern slang or word usage or just English words not derived from German or Romance languages?

 

[GinandTonic]

To placate means to calm, so the prefix "im" or "in" denotes the antonym. Thus, implacable is the opposite of placable. Another example is indefatigable, meaning "unable to tire," with the root being defatigate, or "to tire."

Yet the word has a tone of meaning not present in the literal rendition.

Implacable in usage would mean fixed to your goal, where emotion will not destract you. Hence it could also connote unemotional, unstopable progress towards a goal.

"The alien machines continued their implacable progress"

It could also connote emotionally unreadable.

"The gunfighter looked implacably upon his adversary.

 

[Arwon]

Correct me if I'm wrong, English isn't my native language, but I find it far more natural to say "There is A myriad OF windows in New York City". Am I totally wrong?

Both work, "myriad" as adjective of number is rarer but perfectly legitimate. "She gave myriad reasons why it wouldn't work". Etcetera.

My word: Newfangled.

Newfangled is a word mocking or expressing confusion about something new or innovative or novel, typically employed in a sarcastic or satirical sense to mock or imitate old people's reservations about new or innovative or novel things.

"I just don't like these newfangled Ipods! Give me my grammaphone anyday!"

 

[shortguy]

IIRC myriad is an archaic number now co-opted to mean an uncountably high number. Greek historian counting x myriads of persians or sum such. Five thousand or something.

Close; it's ten thousand.

That's quite different to what I would expect it to be. Thanks.

That's interesting, because implacable has fairly obvious Latinate roots. in (used for negation) + placeo ("to please, satisfy")

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Correct me if I'm wrong, English isn't my native language, but I find it far more natural to say "There is A myriad OF windows in New York City". Am I totally wrong?

Neither is wrong.

This reminds me of an American idiom: tomato tomato (pronounced tow-may-toe, tow-mah-toe). It illustrates how two different versions of the same thing are acceptable, and it means "we're saying the same thing, in different words," though it's also come to mean "you do it your way, I'll do it mine," and "we're both right."

Yet the word has a tone of meaning not present in the literal rendition.

Implacable in usage would mean fixed to your goal, where emotion will not destract you. Hence it could also connote unemotional, unstopable progress towards a goal.

"The alien machines continued their implacable progress"

It could also connote emotionally unreadable.

"The gunfighter looked implacably upon his adversary.

Inexorable is also appropriate in the alien sentence. For our English learners, inexorable means unavoidable and unpreventable.

But you are correct, there's often more to a word than meets the eye. I'll make a point to explain that further when I introduce new words in here.

 

[GinandTonic]

Inexorable is also appropriate in the alien sentence. For our English learners, inexorable means unavoidable and unpreventable.

Yeah, inexorable would cover the unstopable sense more specifically. An awful lot of these antonyms overlap their connotations, or the meaning of the one implys shades of the other.

 

[Halcyon]

This is a pretty good site for this sort of thing, for those interested.

Close; it's ten thousand.

It can be, but it's more often defined as "the number of grains of sand on a beach".

 

[shortguy]

It can be, but it's more often defined as "the number of grains of sand on a beach".

Well, it's context dependent. You're right that it was the Ancient Greeks' "really big number" word, but on the other hand when, say, Xenophon uses it, he probably means approximately ten thousand.

 

[scherbchen]

Lenient is latin derived . But are you asking for modern slang or word usage or just English words not derived from German or Romance languages?

curses! the latter

flabbergasted is another nice one.

 

[Drewcifer]

Copacetic: the dictionary definition is excellent or first rate.

I generally think of it as a state of goodness. It was a popular beatnik hippy word in the mid 20th century. That's not copacetic, man.

It is used more in spoken English than in written.

 

[Mirc]

To placate means to calm, so the prefix "im" or "in" denotes the antonym. Thus, implacable is the opposite of placable. Another example is indefatigable, meaning "unable to tire," with the root being defatigate, or "to tire."

I understand now that I heard about what implacable means. I was surprised by the meaning of both placable and implacable, since I would have expect the word implacable to mean something along the lines of "hard to convince, unmovable in its opinion, fixed, unchangeable", or hard to understand (example: an implacable expression on one's face).

It's probably a false friend with my language.

 

[Mirc]

That's interesting, because implacable has fairly obvious Latinate roots. in (used for negation) + placeo ("to please, satisfy")

Only that I was confused because the Romanian word (implacabil) has a different etymology.

Im + placabil (from Latin "im + placabilis").

While the long infinitive of the verb placeo, "placere" survived in Romanian unchanged (Romanian "placere" - pleasure), and it formed its own verb (a place - to like), the word "placabilis" has got a different meaning, and so getting the prefix "im" got it to mean unchangeable (or maybe hard to change), fixed in one's opinions, unreachable with your ideas, etc, and since in my language, placable doesn't mean to calm, implacable has no reason to mean "impossible to calm down".

 

[Disenfrancised]

curses! the latter

flabbergasted is another nice one.

I'm always suprised at the number of really common modern english words derived from South Asia, just some examples:

Shampoo (hindi)
Pajamas (turkistani)
Bangle
Blighty (from the Hindi word for foreigner )
Loot
Pundit (from Hindi 'Pandit' meaning learned man )
Avatar
Jungle (from sanskrit)
Pariah (from Tamil)
Amok (Malaysian)