Ten Words Every Grad Should Know

10 Words Every Graduate Should Know

If you graduated from high school--no matter the year!--you should know these 10 words, according to the editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Actually you should know 90 more, too. And they're all in "100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know." But let's start with these 10.

Time to test yourself! The definitions are at the end of this page so you don't have to go far to find out what the words mean.

Top 10 words you should know:

abstemious
bellicose
chromosome
filibuster
gauche
gerrymander
interpolate
irony
plagiarize
suffragist

Just as any current high school student preparing for the SAT college admissions test can tell you, words sometimes contain hints as to their meanings either through spelling or sound. For example, "abstemious" means to eat or drink in moderation. It sounds a lot like "abstain," so on a multiple-choice test, you might be able to figure this out from the sound of the word.

"The words we suggest are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language," Steven Kleinedler, senior editor of "100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know," says in a news release announcing the book. But he admitted to the Detroit Free Press that few people actually know all 100. Confession time: He told the paper that one of the words on the top 100 list, "quotidian," was completely new to him. (It means commonplace or ordinary.)

The meanings of the 10 words above (on the off chance you need to bone up on your vocabulary):

abstemious: eating and drinking in moderation; self-denying

bellicose: warlike or hostile; belligerent

chromosome: a strand of DNA; genetic material

filibuster: the use of obstructionist tactics, especially prolonged speechmaking

gauche: lacking grace or social polish; vulgar

gerrymander: to divide voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party

interpolate: to insert or introduce between other elements or parts; to butt-in

irony: the use of words to express something different from and often opposite to literal meaning

plagiarize: to use and pass off the ideas or writing of another as one's own

suffragist: an advocate of voting rights, especially for women