Wow I feel like almost all adult native speakers will have heard of a feeding frenzy, a vacant lot and a prestigious award. Those look like good words of the day for speakers of English as a second language of 2-5 years maybe.

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

right? I had to check myself: "am i that pretentious that I use this many words average people don't know?"and there's no good way to ask that question without sounding even more pretentious

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yeah no, you're fine, I'm an ESL speaker (although for 17 years) so they can't be that special. But verve and eyrie (seen elsewhere in this thread, from Tolkien) those I actually had to search up. Haha my browsers spellcheck even puts squiggles under eyrie.

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

weird! never seen the spelling "eyrie" but I'd probably be fine with understanding "aerie" from context. I looked it up too and apparently that's the same word but ae is NA style

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

I had to look them up as well.

verve vəːv

noun

vigour and spirit or enthusiasm.

eyrie ˈɪəri

noun

a large nest of an eagle or other bird of prey, built high in a tree or on a cliff.

a high or inaccessible place from which someone can observe what is below them.

TIL.