A German mouthful. It means coming to terms with the past. I read it in NY Times. So when I looked it up I found out other interesting things (which often happens to me when I look stuff up.) I was wondering, do normal people recognize this word? Are there really people walking around who have this in their collective vocabulary?
A pretty standard test in general for readability (which takes into account the level of vocabulary used) is a mathematic equation known as the Felsch-Kincaid Readability index. Scores of 90.0–100.0 are considered easily understandable by an average 11-year old student. 13- to 15-year old students could easily understand passages with a score of 60–70, and passages with results of 0–30 are best understood by college graduates. Reader's Digest magazine has a readability index of about 65, Time magazine scores about 52, and the Harvard Law Review has a general readability score in the low 30s. The highest (easiest) readability score possible is 121 (every sentence consisting of a one-syllable word); theoretically there is no lower bound on the score -- this sentence, for example, taken as a reading passage unto itself, has a readability score of ~21.9. This paragraph has a readability score of ~ 53.93. This is such an important tool that word processing programs have this algorithim programmed into them to generate a score for you automatically. So naturally curious about just how awesome is my thesis really, I ran the test on my 1,000 words. Google Documents has this as an editing option, like word count or spell check. And just how awesome is my writing? It's about Reader's Digest awesome. So 7th graders beware, literature regarding the nature of home and mobile architecture is well within your reach.