Vocabulary

Definitions: Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Noun

1. A listing of the words used in some enterprise.

2. A language user's knowledge of words.

3. The system of techniques or symbols serving as a means of expression (as in arts or crafts); "he introduced a wide vocabulary of techniques".

Date "vocabulary" was first used: 1532. (references)

Etymology: Vocabulary \Vo*cab"u*la*ry\, noun; plural Vocabularies. [from Late Latin expression vocabularium, vocabularius: compare to the French expression vocabulaire. See Vocable.]. (Websters 1913)

Synonyms: Vocabulary

Synonyms: lexicon (n), mental lexicon (n). (additional references)

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Specialty Definition: Vocabulary

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

simple:Vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of words that a given person knows, or that one is being taught in a specific language.

Example:

encyclopedia (in English)
百科事典 (Hyakka-jiten encyclopedia in Japanese)
For a sample of Korean and Chinese vocabulary (in comparison), see Hanja.

See also: language, grammar, part of speech, word, jargon, term, slang, glossary, technical terminology

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Vocabulary."

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Synonyms within Context: Vocabulary

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
List	Dictionary, lexicon; vocabulary, glossary; thesaurus.
Word	Dictionary, vocabulary, lexicon, glossary; index, concordance; thesaurus; gradus, delectus.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

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Crosswords: Vocabulary

English words defined with "vocabulary": accent ♦ Baby jumper, Back stairs, Bass drum, Bench warrant, Bessemer steel, Black death, Black rod, Black vomit, Blood money, Blood vessel, Bone setter, Broom rape, Bush hammer, Butterfly lily ♦ Canker rash, Cast iron, Chain pumps, Chain wheel, Chief justice, Coal tar, Coffer dam, Counter brace, Cross bill, Cross breed, Cross purpose, Crown imperial, Crown office, Crown piece, Crown saw, Crown wheel, Crown work ♦ dialect, Dog Star, Drawing knife ♦ Emu wren, Epsom salts ♦ Fire dog, flint glass, flying fish, Flying machine, flying squirrel, Foot poundal, Fore topmast, Franklin stove ♦ Glass sponge, Glauber's salt, Green gage, Gunter's quadrant ♦ High priest ♦ idiom, Idiom Neutral ♦ Jack snipe ♦ knee joint ♦ legalese, lieutenant general, Like figures ♦ Maid Marian, Man of war, May flower, May pole ♦ Nomenclator ♦ Office holder ♦ Paradise bird, Pepper corn, Pine finch, Poly mountain ♦ Reef band ♦ Sea widgeon, sea wolf, SGML, Sly boots, standard generalized markup language ♦ The Wain, Tirrit, To-, To morrow, Turn buckle ♦ Up stairs ♦ Vocabularies, Vocabulist ♦ Water on the chest, window pane, Wood tick ♦ Yellow fever. (references)

Specialty definitions using "vocabulary": A 1, A Language for Intelligent Combinatorial Exploration, A Portrait of J. Random Hacker, Awful ♦ child development specialist, Commodious, Convenient ♦ development disability specialist ♦ infant educator ♦ Jil ♦ Language Tests, linguistic thesaurus ♦ many-to-one mapping ♦ Obsolete, Oleaginous, omnibus test ♦ parent trainer ♦ Resource Description Framework ♦ SLANG, speech recognition ♦ TEACHER, HOME THERAPY, tights ♦ vocabulary control, voice recognition. (references)

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Modern Usage: Vocabulary

Domain	Usage
Screenplays	Shakespeare. I find vocabulary studies so limiting. (Shannon's Deal; writing credit: David Greenwalt) Hopeless is not a word in my vocabulary. (Hit and Runway; writing credit: Jaffe Cohen; Christopher Livingston) Unfortunately, that word is not in my vocabulary. (Dragnet; writing credit: Juan Carlos Mesa) I live in a cell with a women who has a vocabulary of 25 words. (White Oleander; writing credit: Mary Agnes Donoghue) I want this V-chip out of me! It has stunted my vocabulary! (South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut; writing credit: Trey Parker; Matt Stone)
Lyrics	FLEXING VOCABULARY RUNS RIGHT THROUGH ME ("Never Ever"; performing artist: All Saints)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Vocabulary

Domain	Title
Books	Vocabulary Cartoons II: Building an Educated Vocabulary With Sight and Sound Memory AIDS (reference) Verbal Advantage: 10 Steps to an Impressive Vocabulary (reference) AbraVocabra: The Amazingly Sensible Approach to Teaching Vocabulary (reference) Walk, Amble, Stroll: Level 1: Vocabulary Building Through Domains (reference) Vocabulary in Use : Upper Intermediate : Self-study Reference and Practice for Students of North American English (With Answers) (reference) (more book examples)

Theater & Movies	Bee Smart Baby Vocabulary Builder 1 (reference) Bee Smart Baby, Vocabulary Builder 3 - an educational video for infants & toddlers (reference) (more DVD examples; more video examples)

Music	Basic Tonal Vocabulary (reference) Winning Vocabulary (reference) (more classical music examples; more popular music examples)

High Tech	Seiko ED7780 WordPower English Vocabulary Builder (reference) ViaVoice 98 Medical Vocabulary (reference) Vocabulary Builder Greek (reference) Vocabulary Builder Hebrew (reference) (more camera examples; more video game examples; more computer examples; more electronic examples; more software examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Photo Album: Vocabulary

Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	Increased the vocabulary.Credit: Library of Congress.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Familiar Quotations: Vocabulary

Author	Quotation
Alexis De Tocqueville	The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
Louisa May Alcott	Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Use in Literature: Vocabulary

Title	Author	Quote
Young Zaphod Plays It Safe	Douglas Adams	exclaimed both of Zaphod's heads in chorus. "So safe that you have to build a zarking fortress ship to take the by-products to the nearest black hole and tip them in! Only it doesn't get there because the pilot takes a detour--is this right?--to pick up some lobster...? OK, so the guy is cool, but...I mean own up, this is barking time, this is major lunch, this is stool approaching critical mass, this is....this is...total vocabulary failure!"
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Vocabulary

Subject	Topic	Quote
Health		Parents and teachers can help them build vocabulary through a variety of techniques. (references)
		Building one's vocabulary of medical terms in such a gradual manner has been shown to improve the learning process. (references)
		A better vocabulary and nomenclature are critically needed to define clearly terms related to obesity, especially terms defining outcomes. (references)
Economic History	Estonia	One-third of the standard vocabulary is derived from adding suffixes to root words. (references)
Travel	Argentina	For U.S. business people who already speak Spanish, note that Argentine has distinct differences in pronunciation, cadence and vocabulary. (references)
	Ukraine	Some useful Ukrainian vocabulary to remember is DOBRIY DEHN (hello, good day); DYA-KOO-YOU (thank you); BOOD LASKA (please/you're welcome). (references)
Lexicography	Devil's Dictionary	TIGHTS, n. An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity. Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of ingenuity and sustained reflection. It was Miss Hall's belief that nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs. This theory was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation! It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what was known among the ancients as "modesty." The nature of that sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us. The study of lost arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts themselves recovered. This is an epoch of renaissances, and there is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from its hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the stage.
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

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Spoken Usage: Vocabulary

Speaker	Phrase(s)
Mattie Stepanek	Well, to your first question, in my schoolwork, my favorite subject is probably my British literature and my world history. I also enjoy my vocabulary. And to give you an honest answer, my least favorite subject is biology.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Vocabulary

"Vocabulary" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 90.48% of the time. "Vocabulary" is used about 797 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	90.48%	721	9,334
Adjective (general or positive)	9.15%	73	39,105
Noun (proper)	0.25%	2	245,945
Noun (common)	0.13%	1	339,140
Total	100.00%	797	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expressions: Vocabulary

Expressions using "vocabulary": vocabulary control ♦ vocabulary list ♦ vocabulary test ♦ vocabulary test function. Additional references.
Hypenated Usage
	Ending with "vocabulary": large-vocabulary, sight-vocabulary, voc-voc-vocabulary.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Vocabulary

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day	Expression	Frequency per Day
vocabulary	1,076	computer vocabulary	37
spanish vocabulary	163	japanese vocabulary	36
vocabulary words	117	german vocabulary	34
sat vocabulary	110	vocabulary development	30
english vocabulary	89	sat vocabulary words	30
vocabulary builder	85	italian vocabulary	29
french vocabulary	65	peabody picture test vocabulary	29
vocabulary workshop answer	60	increase vocabulary	28
gre vocabulary	57	spanish vocabulary list	25
teaching vocabulary	50	vocabulary quiz	24
vocabulary list	47	business vocabulary	23
vocabulary test	47	vocabulary activity	21
vocabulary game	45	science vocabulary	21
vocabulary answer	43	harry potter vocabulary	20
vocabulary worksheets	43	latin vocabulary	19
improve vocabulary	42	answer oxford sadlier vocabulary workshop	19
vocabulary building	40	improving vocabulary	17
vocabulary lesson plan	39	oxford sadlier vocabulary workshop	17
vocabulary workshop	39	answer oxford sadlier vocabulary	17
math vocabulary	38	million dollar vocabulary	16
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translations: Vocabulary

Language		Translations for "vocabulary"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Afrikaan		woordeboek (dictionary). (various references)

Albanian		leksik (lexicon), fond fjalësh (lexicon), fjalorth (small dictionary), fjalor (dictionary, glossary, lexicon, thesaurus, wordbook), fjalës (wordbook). (various references)

Arabic		‏مفردات اللغة, ‏معجم (dictionary, lexicography, lexicon), ‏المعجم. (various references)

Bulgarian		словно богатство, речник (diction, dictionary, lexicon, wordbook), лексика. (various references)

Catalan		diccionari (dictionary). (various references)

Chinese		語彙 , 詞彙 , 词汇量 (Vocabularies). (various references)

Czech		slovník (dictionary, reference book), slovníèek, slovní zásoba (lexicon), slovíèka. (various references)

Danish		ordbog (dictionary). (various references)

Dutch		woordenschat, vocabulaire. (various references)

Esperanto		vortaro (dictionary), leksiko. (various references)

Faeroese		orðabók (dictionary). (various references)

Farsi		فرهنگ لغات , مجموع لغات یک زبان , لغت (Verb, Word), واژگان (Terminology). (various references)

Finnish		sanavarasto, sanasto (glossary, nomenclature, terminology), sanaluettelo (list of words). (various references)

French		vocabulaire (voc., vocab), dictionnaire. (various references)

Frisian		wurdboek (dictionary). (various references)

German		Wortschatz (linguistic thesaurus, thesaurus), Wörterverzeichnis (glossary, list of words, voc.), Vokabel (word), Sprachschatz. (various references)

Greek		λεξιλόγιο (wordbook). (various references)

Hebrew		אוצר מילים (dictionary, lexicon). (various references)

Hungarian		szókincs (lexicon). (various references)

Icelandic		orðabók (dictionary). (various references)

Indonesian		perbendaharaan kata, kosakata (lexicon). (various references)

Italian		dizionario (dictionary, thesaurus), vocabolario (dictionary, voc.). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		語彙 (glossary), ボイル油 (boiled oil, bowl, bowl game, bowler, bowling), 単語篇 (glossary), 単語 (single-character word, word). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		た�"�"へ�" (glossary), た�"�" (Boy's Day celebration, single-character word, word), ボキャブラリー , �"い (glossary, meaning of a word). (various references)

Korean		어휘 (Vocabularies). (various references)

Lombard		dizionari (dictionary). (various references)

Manx		tasht-fockle. (various references)

Norwegian		ordbok (dictionary). (various references)

Papiamen		dikshonario (dictionary), bokabulario. (various references)

Pig Latin		ocabularyvay

Polish		słownik. (various references)

Portuguese		vocabulário (dictionary, wordbook), dicionário (dictionary, liabilities). (various references)

Romanian		dicţionar (dictionary, lexicon, word book). (various references)

Russian		словарь (dictionary, glossary, lexicon, wordbook). (various references)

Scottish		briathrachan (dictionary, word-book). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		rečnik (dictionary, lexicon), leksikon (dictionary, lexicon, wordbook). (various references)

Spanish		diccionario (dictionary, thesaurus), vocabulario (thesaurus, wordbook). (various references)

Swedish		ordlista (gloss, glossary, lexicon, wordlist), ordförråd. (various references)

Turkish		kullanılan kelimeler, kelime hazinesi (thesaurus). (various references)

Ukranian		словниковий запас, словник (dictionary, glossary, lexicon, nomenclator, wordbook), лексика. (various references)

Welsh		geirfa (glossary). (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Ancestral Language Translations: Vocabulary

Language	Period	Translations
Latin	500 BCE-Modern	vocabulum. (various references)
Medieval Latin	700-1500	vocabularium. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Misspellings: Vocabulary

Misspellings
	"Vocabulary" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: vocalbulary, vocubulary, vokabularry, volcabulary. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Rhyming with "Vocabulary"

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "vocabulary" (pronounced vōka"byule'rē)
8	-a" b y u l e' r ē	Constabulary.
6	-y u l e' r ē	formulary.
5	-u l e' r ē	ancillary, capillary, corollary, epistolary.
3	-e' r ē	actuary, adversary, apothecary, arbitrary, aviary, beneficiary, bicentenary, Blackberry, blueberry, budgetary, cardiopulmonary, Cassowary, cautionary, cemetery, centenary, cometary, commentary, commissary, concessionary, confectionary, confectionery, contemporary, coronary, counterrevolutionary, cranberry, culinary, customary, deflationary, depositary, Dewberry, dictionary, dietary, dignitary, disciplinary, discretionary, disinflationary, diversionary, Dogberry, dromedary, dysentery, emissary, estuary, evolutionary, exclusionary, expansionary, expeditionary, extraordinary, fiduciary, fragmentary, functionary, funerary, gooseberry, hackberry, hereditary, honorary, Huckleberry, illusionary, imaginary, inflationary, interdisciplinary, interplanetary, involuntary, itinerary, judiciary, lapidary, legendary, library, literary, luminary, mercenary, military, missionary, momentary, monastery, monetary, mortuary, mulberry, necessary, noninflationary, nonmilitary, obituary, ordinary, paramilitary, pecuniary, pituitary, planetary, preliminary, primary, probationary, proprietary, pulmonary, quaternary, raspberry, reactionary, recessionary, revolutionary, Rosemary, salutary, sanctuary, sanitary, savagery, secondary, secretary, sedentary, semilegendary, seminary, solitary, stationary, stationery, statuary, strawberry, subsidiary, temporary, Tilbury, topiary, tributary, undersecretary, unitary, unnecessary, unsanitary, urinary, veterinary, visionary.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

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Anagrams: Vocabulary

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-a-b-c-l-o-r-u-v-y"
	-1 letter: vocabular.
	-2 letters: vacuolar.
	-3 letters: calvary, cavalry, crayola, curably, ovulary, vocably.
	-4 letters: aboral, bacula, calory, carboy, labour, lavabo, ocular, ovular, valour.
	-5 letters: alary, arval, aural, bayou, bolar, boral, boyar, boyla, brava, bravo, burly, cabal, carbo, carob, carol, claro, clary, clour, coala, coaly, cobra, coral, corby, craal, curly, curvy, labor, labra, larva, laura, lobar, loury, ovary, royal.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.