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60 Words Every On-the-job Writer Should Know

The editors of The American Heritage College Dictionary have compiled a vocabulary list titled “100 words that all high school graduates – and their parents – should know.”

From that list I have selected 60 words I think every on-the-job writer should know.  Though unscientifically compiled, my selections reflect my experience in reading thousands of pages of work-related writing each year.

How many of the following words do you know?  Look for some of them in my Weekly word exercise in the months ahead.


 

 

acumen
auspicious
belie
bowdlerize
chicanery
deleterious
diffident
expurgate
facetious
fatuous

feckless
fiduciary
gauche
hegemony
homogeneous
hubris
incognito
incontrovertible
inculcate
infrastructure

 

interpolate
irony
jejune
kinetic
kowtow
laissez faire
lexicon
loquacious
lugubrious
nanotechnology

nomenclature
notarize
obsequious
oligarchy
omnipotent
orthography
paradigm
parameter
pecuniary
plagiarize

 

precipitous
quotidian
recapitulate
reciprocal
reparation
sanguine
subjugate
supercilious
tautology
tempestuous

thermodynamics
totalitarian
unctuous
usurp
vacuous
vehement
vortex
winnow
xenophobe
yeoman