TestVocab is live

TestVocab.com is now open. It's a free test that estimates how many English words you know.

You go through three short lists of words, from common ones like "house" to rare ones most people have never come across. You tick the words you know, and at the end you get a number. It takes a few minutes, and you don't need to sign up or give an email address.

One thing to keep in mind: only tick a word if you actually know what it means. If you've seen it before but couldn't explain it, leave it. Ticking words you're unsure about won't help you, it just makes the result less accurate.

The result is an estimate, not an exact count. The test can only show you a sample of words, so if you take it twice you'll get slightly different numbers. It's good for seeing roughly where you are and whether you're improving, so it's worth taking again in a few months.

The instructions are available in 11 languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Polish, Czech, Swedish, Turkish and Dutch. The words themselves are English, of course.

We'll keep working on the word lists and the scoring, and we'll post here from time to time.