100 Words Every High School Freshman Should Know

The most challenging aspect of entering high school is the increasingly sophisticated and complex vocabulary students should know. These are words that they will regularly see in their freshman year and beyond. The following list of 100 words was chose by the editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries.

1. accentuate 2. alliteration 3. analogy 4. antibody 5. aspire 6. bamboozle 7. bizarre 8. boisterous 9. boycott 10. camouflage 11. chronology 12. commemorate 13. cower 14. decorum 15. deduction 16. deign 17. despondent 18. dialogue 19. divulge 20. eclectic 21. ellipse 22. embargo 23. enthusiastic 24. exponent 25. exult 26. fallacy 27. flourish 28. formidable 29. gargoyle 30. guerrilla 31. guru 32. heritage 33. hieroglyphic 34. hologram 35. hypocrisy 36. immune 37. impertinent 38. inference 39. introspection 40. jaunty 41. jovial 42. kilometer 43. labyrinth 44. laconic 45. lichen 46. light-year 47. maneuver 48. marsupial 49. metaphor 50. mosaic 51. mutation 52. nebula 53. nocturnal 54. nuisance 55. omnivore 56. outrageous 57. ozone 58. parasite 59. participle 60. phloem 61. plateau 62. polygon 63. protagonist 64. pulverize 65. quandary 66. quarantine 67. quota 68. rainforest 69. random 70. recede 71. renaissance 72. renegade 73. repose 74. sacrifice 75. silhouette 76. solstice 77. spectrum 78. stereotype 79. strategy 80. suffrage 81. symbiosis 82. tariff 83. technique 4. tempo 85. toxin 86. tranquility 87. tumult 88. tundra 89. ultraviolet 90. unanimous 91. undulate 92. vaccine 93. vacillate 94. vertebrate 95. virtuoso 96. voracious 97. wretched 98. xylem 99. yacht 100. zoology

Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Word List reproduced by permission from "100 Words Every High School Freshman Should Know."

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