
Words known by men and women - twowo
http://crr.ugent.be/archives/1628
======
JackFr
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth)

"A shibboleth is a word or custom whose variations in pronunciation or style
can be used to differentiate members of ingroups from those of outgroups.

 _Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever
Ephraimite fugitives said, 'Let me cross,' the men of Gilead would ask, 'Are
you an Ephraimite?' If he said, 'No,' they then said, 'Very well, say
"Shibboleth" (שבלת).' If anyone said, "Sibboleth" (סבלת), because he could not
pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the
Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion._

Today, in American English, a shibboleth also has a wider meaning, referring
to any "in-group" word or phrase that can be used to distinguish members of a
group from outsiders – even when not used by a hostile other group."

~~~
bladedtoys
Aside from a shibboleth, I think there might be other ways to tell men and
woman apart.

~~~
gpvos
If you are in an online chat, it may be the most practical method.

------
xarien
Dual wielding a claymore and scimitar, the kevlar armored biped golem paladin
sped his humvee at mach 3 onto the the dreadnought powered by a massive
solenoid to retrieve the codec which unlocks the secrets of Bolshevism.

Because why not.

~~~
bitJericho
I'd be far more impressed with a sentance using the womanly words. I don't
know what 90 percent of them mean!

~~~
xarien
Challenge accepted! This one was definitely hard...

With her wild flouncing tresses and flouncy taupe colored taffeta bodice, the
young woman made quick work whipping her mascarpone to the delicate tune of
the peony, bottlebrush, and wisteria inspired Decoupage Florentine style music
box remarkably given her elevated progesterone levels.

------
jeroen94704
This reminds me of a question I once posted on reddit, but never received an
answer to: Given that a many jokes are based on peculiarities of a language
(puns, but also unexpected uses of certain words), are there jokes that only
funny in sign language? If so, what's an example?

~~~
lukev
Yes. I'm not fluent in sign language myself so I can't explain them very well,
but we got several examples of them in my linguistics classes in college.

The most memorable one was a story in which a giant is talking to a small
person sitting on his hand and the narrator acts it out. The final word of the
joke is a pun... it makes sense in the story, but the sign for it is to clap
the hands together (thus, in the story, squishing the small person).

~~~
jeroen94704
Cool, thanks for that! Another one of life's great mysteries resolved.

------
Aardwolf
Wow this is interesting! I'm male and knew all of the male words (some thanks
to RPG games :)), but only one of the female ones: mascarpone (because I made
tiramusu a few times :))

Note: English is not my native language and what I use English for is probably
not biased towards the kind of words in the female list.

~~~
danielweber
Sam Baldwin: What is "tiramisu"?

Jay: You'll find out.

Sam Baldwin: Well, what is it?

Jay: You'll see!

Sam Baldwin: Some woman is gonna want me to do it to her and I'm not gonna
know what it is!

~~~
antimagic
I'm thinking that quoting "Sleepless in Seattle" probably isn't helping a man
who doesn't already know what tiramisu is...

------
smol444
This is funny how this research confirms many of gender stereotypes. Men seem
to know mostly war and technology related words while women know more about
clothes, textiles and gardening.

They also have a pretty interesting vocabulary test. I wonder how they
generated pseudowords. They are really tricky and funny.

~~~
Argorak
Well, a stereotype is not necessarily unfounded. In the region where I come
from (around a chemical factory), it wasn't hard do describe populations in a
certain town as "chemical workers". You'd probably describe 60% of the
population. And a country where only men were allowed into the military for
ages also assign and teach those things based on gender.

The problem with stereotypes is that they are a very bad indicators to judge
any specific individual now (both because they carry history and bad fit). You
might miss important points or assume knowledge that isn't there on a regular
basis. Gender stereotypes are especially problematic as they split the whole
population into two and assign a lot of attributes purely based on one
criterion.

The effects and conditions leading to a certain stereotype are also a fun
thing to research.

~~~
peterwwillis
I would love to have an in-depth conversation about the origins of stereotypes
and how they relate to real-world examples, but HN is too politically correct
to make an attempt. Which is sad because HN people are generally intelligent
enough to pick stereotypes apart without devolving into ugly banter.

~~~
obvious_throw
I can start.

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.po...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029265)

To wit: men and women vary wildly in their personalities, and it is very
likely this is due far more to different (genetic) sexual selection pressures
than it is to socialization and acculturation.

But here's the problem with attempting an "in-depth discussion" on this topic:
anyone who attempts to bring facts to a feels fight will always lose. Even on
supposedly "rational" HN.

So, good luck with that.

~~~
jtheory
The problem with stereotypes is step 2; what you do with it.

How many of us are habitually making decisions based on large masses of
people, rather than individuals? We almost all deal with individuals, one
after another (sometimes in small groups), all day long.

In that context, the stereotypes we make _even based on research_ are harmful;
if you assume the person you're speaking with won't know what a "humvee" is
because she's a woman, you'll be wrong 58% of the time, and she'll be
insulted. Plus there's a 22% chance the man next to her won't know the word.
...All of this assuming that you're speaking with a random selection of
strangers taken from those who took this online vocab quiz; and how likely is
that?

That's why people get so worked up about stereotypes; there may be some
original kernel of truth underlying them (some of them), but people who then
make assumptions _while dealing with individuals_ do a lot of damage in the
world.

~~~
obvious_throw
Stereotypes are a primitive form of decision heuristics. We _must_ use
heuristics when dealing with the enormous volume of information that we are
required to process on a day to day basis, or we would never get anything done
as we evaluate every micro-decision at an atomistic level.

As far as missing out on great opportunities by using heuristics, it happens
_all the time_ , and not just with race/sex/age stereotypes. It happens with
food, it happens with color, it happens with sounds and temperatures and
fabrics and pets. We require heuristics based on generalizations and
abstractions to even function in the world.

There is no easy solution to this, but the saving grace of a semi-free society
is that if your particular heuristic excludes a great opportunity, it's very
likely someone else's heuristic does not.

------
mseebach
The HN title is misleading. These are words with a large-ish difference
between how many men and women know them, but there is rightfully no "only" in
the original title. "codec" is the only word know by less than 50% of women
(48%). Similarly, there's only one word know by less than 50% of men,
"taffeta". In both, the bottom of the 12 words has a difference of 25%-points.

The "men words" seem to be videogames and war stuff (except codec which, dare
I suggest, is an online porn word). Women words are in the fields of
decoration, fashion and flowers.

~~~
tinfoilman
Codec is a porn word???? it would have taken you longer to write that comment
that look it up the right answer.

Codec are how your video and audio is encoded over the internet but I enjoy
that you defaulted to a male word must be about porn. Flac/G711/g729/h323 are
codec's (audio), infact here is a list
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs)

I was going to explain to you why boys and girls focus on different words. Its
to do with world perceptive that is shaped in early childhood but I really
cannot be assed to start a chatter with someone that makes pointless
observations, and then proceeds to make random comments based of their
interruption of basic internet terminology without even looking something up.

~~~
jordigh
I think mseebach means that men people are probably exposed to the word due to
the need to watch porn videos and thus learn about codecs, not that it's a
word exclusive to porn.

I don't think it's about porn, though, I find the torrented movies explanation
more plausible.

------
InclinedPlane
Fellow men, if you don't know what mascarpone is you're missing out.

~~~
ryusage
So, it's just a type of cheese? Is it special somehow? Or is it just really
tasty cheese?

~~~
InclinedPlane
It lies somewhere along the spectrum between cream cheese and creme fraiche.
It's basically the best thing ever invented to put inside of a dessert crepe,
though it has many other suitable uses, of course.

------
cafard
I "know" most words on both. That is to say, I know that a solenoid is a kind
of switch (a common failure point in the ignitions of 1960s cars), and I know
that "taffeta" is a kind of fabric. But if you sent me into an auto parts
store with the labels in an script I don't know (Chinese, Arabic, etc.) my
chances of coming out with a solenoid would be not much better than my chances
of getting taffeta in a fabric store so labeled. Likewise "paladin" fits
somewhere in a medieval warfare context, but can I define it? I think that
Roland and Oliver might have been paladins.

The good news is that I can identify wisteria for several weeks every year...

~~~
cshimmin
Actually, a solenoid is just a coil [1], which in electronics can be used to
turn a current into a magnetic field. It is used to implement switches, but
has other applications as well. For example, the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid)
[2] experiment uses theirs to generate a strong magnetic field to bend the
tracks high-energy charged particles.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solenoid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solenoid)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Muon_Solenoid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Muon_Solenoid)

~~~
mindcrime
Context matters... ask most auto buffs, or the clerk behind the counter at
Advance Auto Parts, what a "solenoid" is and they'll tell you (rightly) that
it's a relay that controls the high-current circuit between the battery and
the starter, using the low current circuit through the ignition switch.

------
eli
_" These 24 words should suffice to find out whether a person you are
interacting with in digital space is male or female."_

Err, well that's just not true. Also, they'd have to actually use one of these
words.

~~~
freehunter
Yeah, and they're not very common words no matter what your gender. I can't
imagine most men bring up the word "dreadnought" in casual conversation, and
"wisteria" probably only gets mentioned (if you're not a florist) in the
context of Desperate Housewives.

~~~
kghose
[http://www.anyclip.com/movies/sneakers/passport/](http://www.anyclip.com/movies/sneakers/passport/)

------
imgabe
The words "not known" by the other gender seem to still be known by 50-60% of
the gender that allegedly doesn't know them. I don't know that that is a
really useful test.

~~~
kaoD
The original title lacks "only". It's useful because these are the words with
the biggest difference between men and women.

------
maxerickson
Posted a few days ago, not much discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896864)

And a derivative with no discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7936589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7936589)

------
gabemart
I found the vocab test itself [1] quite interesting, but without information
about the distribution of scores it's difficult to interpret the "% words
known" metric.

Is the distribution of scores publicly available anywhere?

[1]
[http://vocabulary.ugent.be/wordtest/start](http://vocabulary.ugent.be/wordtest/start)

~~~
logfromblammo
All the words I did not recognize were either absolutely British regional
slang or they had one or more synonyms that are overwhelmingly more common in
the US.

Examples: juggins, freeview, jackfish, redbrick

The US equivalents would be bumpkin, superstation (?), northerns, and ivy (as
in Ivy League).

I sort of assumed that the nonsense word generator would make nonsense
compounds from valid English words, which is why I rejected those last 3,
despite that nagging feeling that they were so simple that someone, somewhere
might have used them.

~~~
hcho
Freeview refers to a television service these days:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeview_(UK)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeview_\(UK\))

~~~
logfromblammo
I saw that when I clicked the "what does it mean" link at the end. I recall
thinking that trademarks are not, strictly speaking, English words. That would
be like saying "microsoft" is a word, because "Microsoft" is a company. That's
why researchers in this vein have to review their source dictionaries, and
scrub out all the things that met the lexicographers criteria but not the
researchers'.

But maybe that is what they are doing. The test was on whether the viewer
recognized the string as a word. The comparison at the end was probably just
what can be found in the latest revision of the unabridged Oxford English
Dictionary. They might be using the results to assemble a word corpus that
could be used in other research applications. If that's the case, bravo for
not requiring a bunch of research assistants to endlessly pore over word
lists.

------
candybar
Given how the test was administered - it was a yes/no "do you know this word"
test with some fake words mixed in to discourage people from saying yes to
words they don't know - "know" is a bit of a stretch here - "recognize as a
word" is probably the better description of these percentages. I don't think
the results are all that meaningful because none of these words are used much
- most of them are used only in contexts that already imply an uneven gender
ratio. On the other hand, there are probably a lot of common words used in
casual contexts that are recognized by virtually everyone whose usage is
significantly skewed by gender - those are probably much useful for
identifying gender.

~~~
x1798DE
For me, if I had to actually define some of these words, it would skew even
more by gender, depending on what you mean by "define". For example, I know
that a peony is a flower, but I wouldn't be able to draw you one, nor would I
be able to identify it other than by process of elimination. Similarly I know
that "taupe" is a color, but I don't really know which color (I mean,
obviously these are now bad examples because I look thinks up when I don't
know them, but the point is still relevant).

I'm not that surprised that many of the "female" words have to do with
clothing that only women wear. Men don't tend to wear anything all that
elaborate, and often it's unisex anyway. It's possible that that's an artifact
of the fact that women tend to be more interested in fashion than men, though
- I guess I don't really know the difference between Oxfords and boat shoes,
so maybe the fact that there's no comparable set of fashion terms for men is
because even men don't know the terms for the clothes they might wear.

------
skizm
The vocab test is "do you know this word?". It doesn't ask you to demonstrate
that you know the word. So in reality this is words people claim to know, or
have heard before, not words people actually know the definition for and can
use in a sentence.

~~~
jtheory
But they do counter with real-looking non-words, and you're penalized heavily
for claiming to "know" one of the non-words, so that helps the accuracy of the
test.

You can take the test on the site to try it -- here are some of the non-words
I hit that looked real-ish (though I still clicked "no"):

    
    
        rebrenningly
        splaits
        mangean
        postock
        acetylative
        struffhold
    

vs. some of the real words I also clicked "no" for:

    
    
        chrestomathy
        fluoxetine
        coffle
        wedel
        afterpiece

~~~
narwally
Unfortunately fluoxetine would have been an easy one for me. I got the word
korfball (Dutch sport similar to basketball), which is interesting because I
marked that I spoke dutch as a second language. I wonder if that was thrown in
to determine if I truly knew dutch or not. It also could have been in there
because the study is being done by the University of Ghent, and Belgium is
really the only other country where Korfball is popular.

------
TFCPodcast
I have a podcast where we talked about this article, and we, both of us men,
did know very few of the "female" words. It seems like almost all of those
words were from one of two semantic fields though, so if this list tells us
anything of value at all, it's that if women want to keep secrets from men en
masse, they should put them in the floristry/fashion industries.

Here's a link to the clip of us talking about this for those who'd like to
listen:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLoGy6FZygA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLoGy6FZygA)

------
samuel
Ahem... Some days ago I went to a live show and the actor started to interact
with the public. At some point he asked women to raise the hand if they knew
the meaning of "bukake". Almost no women raise her hand.

When it was men's turn, most did, and probably some who didn't raise his hand
knew it too, but were ashamed to admit it in front of their girl friends of
wifes(this could be the case for some women, too).

If you don't what it means, don't search for it at work.

So, I bet that's a way more discriminative word that any of that list.

Edit: the "live show" was just a monologue show, in case you were wondering.

~~~
prawn
This sort of thing comes up if you play Cards Against Humanity and end up
having to explain bukkake, gloryhole and so on to a mixed group of people who
didn't previously think of you as perverted.

------
talles
It surprises me the word 'biped' being there. What's the reason behind men
knowing this word way more than woman? I fail to find a stereotype answer for
this (unlinke kevlar or taffeta)...

~~~
rsynnott
The one I was puzzled by was golem.

~~~
brohee
I'd bet good money it's not knowledge of the Jewish religion but
RPG/videogames at the origin of the awareness of this word among most males...

~~~
narwally
Also, could be a lot of males familiar with the LOTR series, and mistaking
golem for the character gollum. Easy mistake to make if you didn't read the
books.

------
spindritf
I saw it before on Marginal Revolution or somewhere and was impressed with its
accuracy. I'm a guy and English is my second language. I knew all the words on
the first list, and one from the second.

------
twowo
The site is very slow. Here is a mirror:
[http://gnodevel.ugent.be/crr.ugent.be/archives/1628](http://gnodevel.ugent.be/crr.ugent.be/archives/1628)

------
morganvachon
Taking the test, I didn't claim to know any of the fake words, but because of
their disclaimer about that, I'm pretty sure I took the safe "no" answer to a
few words that I seemed to recognize but wasn't positive about. So my score
could have been higher than the 70% I got.

But it's an interesting test overall, and I can see where being a well-read
individual, a writer, or an English professor could achieve high percentages
in "male" and "female" vocabulary.

------
knowtheory
The /r/linguistics thread on this subject does a pretty good job of pointing
out the flaws in the way this data is presented:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/288ed6/12_engli...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/288ed6/12_english_words_known_to_men_only_and_12_words/)

The test that they run is pretty cool, but this conclusion is super weak.

------
fredsted
Here's a mirror since ugent.be seems to have gone down:
[http://mu.ms/f/Oo7ccb.txt](http://mu.ms/f/Oo7ccb.txt)

or Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1meGtpl...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1meGtplQLbcJ:crr.ugent.be/archives/1628)

------
wildpeaks
Hmm, I know all male words but only four of the female ones: guess I'm the
exception that confirms the rule :/

~~~
jordigh
I get the feeling these are "internet" or "computer nerd" words. Many of the
male words I know are all from videogames. Where else would I interact with
dreadnaughts (Red Alert) or claymores (Final Fantasy)? :-)

My guess is that the respondents were self-selected internet dwellers. Looking
at their polling criteria, (an online test?) looks like it may well be the
case.

~~~
tankenmate
Apart from the fact that both of these words pre-date the Internet and/or
computer nerds. The word dreadnaught is a neologistic spelling of dreadnought;
which is a portmanteau contraction of the phrase "fear God, and dread nought".
The first historical use as the name of a naval vessel is HMS Dreadnought
(1553). The word claymore is another very old word, 14th vs 15th century. It
comes from Scots Gaelic and literally means "great sword". Since both words
are terms for two weapons of war it probably is more likely to be known by
men.

~~~
jordigh
I know the words are old, but who nowadays gets exposed to both unless they're
playing videogames? Military history buffs? And that's most men?

------
hoopism
I got 66%... though I wasn't sure if I had to "know it was a word" or "know
what the word meant". I didn't say yes to a fake word... but I said no to
several that I knew were english words, but was unclear as to their meaning.

~~~
prawn
I got 84% (none of the fakes, like you). Had a fair idea as to the rough
meaning of all at worst, but a few I wouldn't have been keen to define in
public and a gun to my head! Fun little test.

------
xamebax
Not sure if anyone pointed this out here before, but asking for a
participant's gender in a questionnaire _before_ any of the questions are
actually asked skews the results. It's got to do with stereotype threat and is
scientifically proven.

------
arikrak
Their test just asks users if they know the word as opposed to actually
testing if they do. So it's percentages are inflated, which may mess up the
proportions as well.

------
Paul_S
Great bit of research but what are the criteria for knowing the word? I doubt
many western men actually know what a bolshevik is. Is this selfcertified or
multiple choice?

~~~
gabemart
The criterion is distinguishing words from non-words. That's it. You don't
have to know the meaning. You just have to distinguish it from a word-like
series of letters. If you incorrectly identify a non-word as a word, your
score is penalized in some way.

------
netcan
Fascinating. I could confidently define 11/12 of the male words and 1/12 of
the female ones.

~~~
morganvachon
I got all of the male words, and 10 of the female words (I'm male). I love to
read both fiction and non-fiction, and I'm fond of writing, so I'll see a word
and form a picture in my mind even before a definition forms.

For example, with "mascarpone" I picture all of the ingredients for making
tiramisu, which I've prepared a few times in my life. With "claymore" I
picture a Scot brandishing a sword as large as he is, even though it can also
refer to a modern military weapon.

~~~
logfromblammo
I picture a huge sword with the prominent inscription on the blade "sharp end
toward enemy".

------
mistaken
Interesting, but even my dictionary doesn't know those words.

------
webmaven
What does it say about me that I know every word on both lists?

------
lfam
How does this site break the "back" button in my browser?

