What does it mean to have a good vocabulary? I'm really wondering that today.
My daughter used the word accost in a sentence today with two co-workers. Neither knew what the word meant.
Granted I'm not using it everyday but it's not an unusual word by any means. Or is it?
Not to me, it's not unusual. Besides, it's often included in "news" reports.
I used the word "incongruous" in conversation with my future SIL one time and she had no clue.
I just performed some hasty searching and the consensus seems to be between 50K and 60K words known -- not always used -- in the average high school graduate's vocabulary. I suspect that is outdated. The issue of "obsolete" words was raised, which struck me as ironic; a population that is ignorant of much of the language will use less and less words, rendering many of them "obsolete".
One of the reasons for claiming the SATs are/were culturally biased is vocabulary, in that "urban" children would have no knowledge or experience with, say, a sloop and so couldn't be expected to know the word. As IDP mentioned, that's where reading comes in.