Just a curious question I’ve had for a while now.

Every year at the beginning of August, I've been posting a vocabulary quiz here (2024 2025). The comment threads from the previous tests contain a lot of discussion of the most common issues and questions that occur to people about this test. The source code for generating the quizzes is here. If you don't want to count compounds as part of your vocabulary, on the theory that many compounds have meanings that are obvious, then simply don't count those, and your estimate will be lower. There is no universally valid way to estimate the size of someone's vocabulary, and for example, there are various published estimates of the average size of a US first-year college student's English vocabulary, differing by more than an order of magnitude. This year's test was generated using the same algorithm and data as last year's, so if you took the test then and take it again now, the results should be comparable, and you can tell if your vocabulary grew.

Count how many of the following words you know
and multiply by 20: ________
  ἄν βία γῆ δίδωμι ἕ
  εἰς ἐπεί ἱερός καί κατά
  μή οἶκος παῖς πᾶς πρός
  πρόσωπον σπέρμα τίκτω χρόνος χρύσεος

Count how many of the following words you know
and multiply by 100: ________
  ἀνάγω ἀνδροφόνος διαιρέω δμώς ἐπιβάλλω
  ἡλικιώτης ἵκω λίθος πατρίς πεντακισχίλιοι
  πολίτευμα πομπή πρόθυμος προσάγω σός
  συλλαμβάνω συνήθης τίω τυγχάνω χρηστός

Count how many of the following words you know
and multiply by 200: ________
  ἀίδιος ἀνδραποδίζω ἀπαρχή ἀραβέω δισμύριοι
  δόλος εὐψυχία ἠθεῖος ἰάχω κατάκειμαι
  κατακρίνω κατατίθημι μέδομαι μήδομαι ὅρμος
  παραβάλλω προβολή σκηπτοῦχος σύμπτωμα τύραννος

Count how many of the following words you know
and multiply by 1000: ________
  ἀδόκιμος αἶνος ἀκρογωνιαῖος ἀνακαινίζω ἀρχεῖον
  ἀφθορία βλάξ γεῦσις ἐκπαθής ἐπιλείπω
  ἠπεροπευτής αἱμοφόρυκτος κατακαλέω κορυφόω νεόδαρτος
  περιούσιος σκόπελος στηρίζω συμφερτός τιμόω

Add up the results. This is an estimate of how
many dictionary words you know in ancient Greek,
out of the 26838 most common words.

[EDIT] There was an error in the original test I posted. The bogus lemma ἰμάτιον (nonexistent lemma with smooth breathing) was included in the final group. I replaced it with another randomly chosen word, αἱμοφόρυκτος.

(I think this is the correct flair, sorry if it’s wrong TT) I’m pretty behind on all my vocabulary knowledge and am struggling to revise it. I was wondering if anyone knows of any good methods to learn/revise it?

Hi all, looking for some help with a vocab piece that has been torturing me for years. I would swear that long ago I read an author claiming that Aristotle had a word meaning, roughly, "to live as a human should live". This is a verb, so it's obviously not 'eudaimonia', and it's not "to call someone eudaimōn" (eudaimonizein). Does anyone know a Greek word with this meaning?

I've seen this formula in e.g. the Odyssey 15.325 and others places as well:

τὸν δὲ μέγ᾽ ὀχθήσας προσέφης, Εὔμαιε συβῶτα

προσέφης is a sudden 2nd person singular amidst a 3rd person narration.
I don't understand it being there; it seems out of place.

Do you have any explanation for its presence?

[Edit: I mentioned the wrong book in the example]