How often do you come across a word you don't know?

[drspouse]

I was reading an article about making sure you look up words you come across and don't know. I was trying to work out how often this happens for me (for reference, I have a PhD so without sounding snobby I am fairly well educated). I am not sure I'd fill 20 pages in a year, but maybe I do too much scrolling and not enough actual reading?
I did see a medical term I didn't know on Mumsnet yesterday, though!

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/oct/06/the-one-change-that-worked-i-was-lost-in-the-infinite-scroll-until-a-small-ritual-renewed-my-love-of-reading

If I’m reading a Will Self book several times a page!

It’s difficult to say how often it happens. But I think we are lucky to speak a language with so many words that learning a new word is still a regular occurrence for adults.

Normally, hardly ever apart from medical stuff like illnesses/conditions I've not come across before.

However I'm interested in theology and have to look up various terms there as I don't have any background in this. This week I had to look up kenosis!

Very rarely tbh. I'm a native English speaker and teach 3 other European languages, so that probably helps, as the links from my foreign languages probably widens the range of words I'd understand.

Not too often, I read a lot and have a passing knowledge of three other languages. As with PPs it would be medical or maybe tech words that can't be worked out.

Seldom in English, more often in other languages I speak well but not to native speaker levels.

I love discovering a new word, though, and I absolutely always look up anything unfamiliar.

Not often in English, but I do look them up if I do. It does depend on the subject - a less familiar academic field will probably mean more look-ups. And once in a while at work, I find myself thinking, that's not what that word means is it? And I'll look it up to check it doesn't have another meaning I'm not aware of.

In foreign languages, all the bloody time. Often it's one i know i have come across before, but just can't remember the translation.

Last time was reading a Minette Walter’s novel. Can remember the word now, so I’m no help.

Depends what I'm reading, but it can be a few a week. I'm reading Carbonel (children's book) to DD at the moment and have had to look up goosegogs and cynosure in just the last few days.

I’m thick as two short planks but my husband is intelligent. Every week, he will ask me to check something he’s written and there will be a new word I’ve not heard before. He’ll tell me it’s definition (although I can normally infer what it means) but I’ll never remember to use it again myself.

Not very often, and I can usually guess at its meaning from the context or from a very basic knowledge of Latin.

I do quite often look up the etymology of words, if not the meaning.

There's usually at least one I don't know in each edition of the London Review of Books.

I’m a translator in a fairly specialised field, so I spend my entire working day with two online bilingual dictionaries plus an English dictionary and thesaurus open on my second monitor - and I use them frequently, even with words I know passively fairly well. I frequently Google ‘difference between word A and word B’ to be certain. However, my passive vocabulary is pretty good by this point so what I don’t recognise at all tends to be 16th-century dialect words or architectural terms and the like. They’re good fun to research.

Outside of medical terms and technical names for things, very rarely. Maybe two or three times a year.

I'm reading about 70% of my waking hours though. I'm deaf so any time I'm watching TV or YouTube then I'm reading the subtitles, or I'm reading a book, or playing a game and reading the dialogue (or the in game chat room) or checking out news articles, or researching something I randomly found interesting. I spend far too much time on Wikipedia.

I don't tend to use a large variety of words when talking or writing but I know what things mean and how to use them.

Fairly frequently. (I’ve got a PhD, Oxbridge degree etc so I’d say I’m ’well educated’ for some values of the word). I’m much more careful about assuming I know what a word means after the ‘erstwhile humbling’. I thought I knew what erstwhile meant. Wasn’t a word I used but I would have been pretty confident that it meant ‘brave’ (eg ‘his erstwhile companion on the quest’). Then someone on the radio used the phrase ‘the erstwhile Tory minister’ and I thought ‘hang on a moment’ and looked it up. And it means former. Lesson learnt.

Maybe about once a month, I'll look up a word I'm not convinced I know the meaning of. 99% I do, or I understand it because of the context. I like to double check these things though.

Higher degree, published peer-reviewed writer and researcher, daily user of thesaurus and, a bit less often, dictionary. I routinely look up words I recognise but need to clarify. I occasionally spot new words and look them up too. Perhaps having a minor short-term memory deficit doesn't help (I have a mild, non-progressive neurological disorder).

Rarely. My mum played seax in Scrabble two years ago and I challenged it - that's the last time I remember not knowing what a word meant.

Ok that's two on this thread! Kenosis and seax.
I knew the meaning of erstwhile, luckily!
Edit: I didn't know cynosure. So that's three!

Several times a week. I do the NYT Spelling Bee every day and more often than not there is some obscure word included.

I've been a language teacher for many years, so rarely. Perhaps the occasional word in New Scientist or the like. I do enjoy looking up and learning new words.

Once a week as we do quite a few crosswords. I love learning a new word. I feel it's a good day.

Quite often.

I read a lot and am frequently using the define function on my kindle.
Sometimes it can be several words in one book, then I could go a few weeks without checking.

Probably several times a week. When I’m reading on my phone and come across a word I don’t understand, I tap to highlight it and select “Look Up.” I find it hard to keep reading unless I know what the word means, it feels like I’m missing the full context otherwise. Of course once I’ve looked it up, I start noticing the word everywhere afterwards.

Rarely, however this thread has given me my months quota of new words in one fell swoop.
Usually it's a legal term I tend to come across that I don't know as I'm a serving JP and despite things supposedly meant to be accessible, the legal profession don't always remember this!