The Wisdom of Vocabulary

• Author: Bryan A. Garner
• Pages: 28-29

The Wisdom of Vocabulary

Test your knowledge of these not-so-everyday words

By Bryan A. Garner

Young Carolyn Dineen King was i ntro-

duced to Johnson O’Connor’s vocabulary-

building books when she was sti ll in junior

high school. She relished them and devel-

oped a prodigious knowledge of words. She

says her vocabulary w as probably bigger

when she was in high school than it is now.

She doubtless couldn’t then have imag-

ined that she would go on to become one

of our most celebrated federal judges, a s

she is currently a senior judge of the New

Orleans-based 5th U.S. Ci rcuit Court of

Appeals.

On the bench, she’s always been fairly

restrained in her w ritten vocabulary.

Maybe that’s partly bec ause when she was

an associate at Fu lbright & Jaworski, at the

age of 25, she was chastened by a pa rtner

at the fi rm: She had used the word pejo-

rative in a draf t brief, and he cut it, calling it a “Smith

College word.” Despite that memorable moment, she

credits her interest in voc abulary, and O’Connor’s books

in particula r, as an important infl uence early in her life.

O’Connor (1891–1973) wasn’t just a writer of vocabu-

lary books. He wa s an early advocate of aptitude test-

ing: a psychometrician. Even today, the eponymous

research foundation that he st arted is a thriving busi-

ness. But among language lovers, he’s best known for hi s

work in understanding how vocabula ry augmentation is

a major key in unlocking human pot ential. O’Connor’s

experiments showed, he wr ote, that “an extensive knowl-

edge of the exact mean ings of English words accompa-

nies outstanding succe ss in this country more often than

any other single charact eristic.” He even

found a strong correlation between t he

size of one’s vocabulary and one’s lifetime

income.

More recent studies show that the main

advantage of know ing more words, and

knowing their conventional sense s, is that

you can read any ki nd of text with greater

comprehension. That, too, is probably

an indicator of success , but 21st-centur y

researchers have been more intere sted

in what is scientifi cally provable than in

claims of self-improvement.

But back in the 1940s and 1950s,

O’Connor found that the most success-

ful lawyers sc ored high in vocabulary—if

we defi ne success as having a high degree

of worldly prosperity. Not everyone with

a big vocabulary ha s a high income, he

wrote, “but the relat ion between the two is close enough

to show that a large vocabula ry is one element, and

seemingly an import ant one.”

O’Connor was good at motivati ng his readers, espe-

cially when he noted that vocabu laries can always be

consciously enhanced rega rdless of any inborn qualities.

For purposes of this column, I’ve dec ided to take words

that O’Connor used in the 1940 s to test American adults,

some college-educated and some not. The follow ing

words are listed by di  cu lty, from easiest t o hardest: the

fi rst was known to 40 percent, and the la st was known to

only 7 percent. The percentage of A merican adults who

knew each word is shown in bra ckets after the possible

answers. Test yourself honestly, without peeking.

28 || ABA JOURNAL MARCH 2019

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JUDGE CAROLYN DINEEN KING AND BY WINN FUQUA PHOTOGRAPHY

Bryan

Garner

on Words

Judge Carolyn Din een King

Practice