IELTS Preparation online gives you IELTS online coaching, IELTS tips, exams tips, IELTS speaking courses, IELTS Writing, IELTS test registration help and advice for finding a test centre in Portland, USA. Discover how the IELTS tries to help you find the answers in the listening section.

Learn new words every day with MR PICK IT (a Process to enhance learning skills)  one of the best vocabulary apps for children to learn English vocabulary in a fun way. This is the perfect app to help your kids learn spelling, grammar and vocabulary—and have fun doing it. Available for iPad & iPhone visit website to get the download link. Download now!

Visit Website: http://mrpickit.net/index.html

Last week, in a choice instance of logophile clickbait, the Guardian asked a handful of well-known writers to give a few words on their favorite words. The result was a little like asking a bunch of chefs to describe their preferred knives, or inviting a group of carpenters to talk about the merits of different saws: a joyful, voluptuous disquisition upon the specialist’s tools.

Here's a link to the original article in the Guardian:

From plitter to drabbletail: the words we love

Dialect terms such as yokeymajig or whiffle-whaffle; all-time favourites like cochineal, clot or eschew; antiquated phrases such as ‘playing the giddy ox’ … leading writers on the words they cherish.

The words:

1. Hilary Mantel: nesh
2. Andrew O’Hagan: clart
3. Will Self: pipe down!
4. Emma Healey: clot
5. Eimear McBride: yoke
6. Neel Mukherjee: tight slap
7. Robert Macfarlane: apophany
8. Taiye Selasi: chale
9. Sarah Hall: gloaming
10. Nick Laird: thrawn
11. Aminatta Forna: plitter
12. Paul Muldoon: slipe
13. Tessa Hadley: cochineal
14. Blake Morrison: whiffle-whaffle
15. Paul Kingsnorth: swamm
16. John Sutherland: widdershins
17. Nina Stibbe: fetlock

My husband found a blog posting about this article and read the words out to me. I'd heard of all of them except mascarpone, which I'm crediting to my eclectic reading tastes. I've not taken the online vocabulary test yet, though I plan to soon. I mostly wanted to see how many of these words each of you knew on each of the lists.

The article makes very clear they chose the one with the biggest gaps between them but I'm not sure I'd buy this anyway. Do read the article, it's interesting and links to the vocab test.

the..."numbers in parenthesis show[ing] the percentage of men who knew the word followed by the percentage of women.

Here are the words that men were most likely to recognize over women:

• codec (88, 48)
• solenoid (87, 54)
• golem (89, 56)
• mach (93, 63)
• humvee (88, 58)
• claymore (87, 589
• scimitar (86, 58)
• kevlar (93, 65)
• paladin (93, 66)
• bolshevism (85, 60)
• biped (86, 61)
• dreadnought (90, 66)

And here are the words that women were most likely to know over men:

• taffeta (48, 87)
• tresses (61, 93)
• bottlebrush (58, 89)
• flouncy (55, 86)
• mascarpone (60, 90)
• decoupage (56, 86)
• progesterone (63, 92)
• wisteria (61, 89)
• taupe (66, 93)
• flouncing (67, 94)
• peony (70, 96)
• bodice (71, 96)"