Researcher reveals 20 words women know, but men don't

NZ Herald

15 Feb, 2022 12:09 AM3 mins to read

There are several words in the English language that women know but leave men stumped. Photo / Getty Images

New research has revealed that many of the words women know are a complete mystery to men.

Professor Marc Brysbaert from Ghent University in Belgium conducted a vocabulary test analysing how many words people knew, reports The Sun.

He then used the data from an online poll of 220,000 people to analyse trends found among the varied responses from men and women.

Words like tulle, chignon, bandeau and freesia were more commonly found to be familiar to women, he found.

The female participants in the study also knew certain words like kohl, chenille, verbena, sateen, voile and chambray better than men did.

However, the male participants were found to know several other words better than women - such as yakuza, teraflop, neodymium, parsec and bushido.

The data showed that men were also more likely to know words like azimuth, howitzer, millilamp, thermistor and femtosecond.

The Mirror UK reported that the results sparked confusion - and sometimes even heated debate.

One critic wrote, "I know all but one of the female list and all but three of the male list.

"If you know a bit about physics, hair and beauty, weapons, and dressmaking you're got most of both lists covered."

One man wrote: "Words men know but women don't and vice versa.

"As a man, I have to say … are those real words women know? I don't know a single one. I do know quite a few of the male words, but not all."

Professor Brysbaert, who is director of the Centre for Reading Research at Ghent University, first led a study in 2016 analysing how many words people know.

"At the Centre of Reading Research we are investigating what determines the ease with which words are recognised," he explained.

The test includes a list of 62,000 words that he and his team have compiled.

"As we made the list ourselves and have not used a commercially available dictionary list with copyright restrictions, it can be made available to everyone, and all researchers can access it."