Words More Women Knew on the Ghent University Online Vocabulary Test

In Fight Club, possibly the manliest movie of the nineties, Brad Pitt's character Tyler Durden asks, "Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word?"
Contrary to Tyler Durden's suggestion about feminization and consumerism, the results of a new online vocabulary test from Ghent University suggest that men aren't as familiar with stereotypically "female" words like "taffeta" as Durden suggested. (Though it should be noted that it is only on "taffeta" that the percentage of males who know the word falls below 50%. Most of these words were familiar to more than half the men)

The words below are those with the biggest percentage splits by gender where women knew the word more than men in a simple recognition task.
10 words 59 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. taffeta
    a crisp, smooth, lustrous fabric
    Percentage of people who knew the word, by gender:

    Women 87%
    Men 48%
  2. tress
    (usually plural) a long lock of hair
    As "tresses":
    Women 93%
    Men 61%
  3. bottlebrush
    a cylindrical brush on a thin shaft that is used to clean bottles
    Women: 89%
    Men : 58%
  4. mascarpone
    soft mild Italian cream cheese
    Women: 90%
    Men: 60%
  5. decoupage
    art produced by decorating a surface with cutouts and then coating it with several layers of varnish or lacquer
    Women: 86%
    Men: 56%
  6. progesterone
    a steroid hormone produced in the ovary
    Women: 92%
    Men: 63%
  7. wisteria
    any flowering vine of the genus Wisteria
    Women: 89%
    Men: 61%
  8. taupe
    a greyish brown
    Women: 93%
    Men: 66%
  9. peony
    any of numerous plants widely cultivated for their showy single or double red or pink or white flowers
    Women: 96%
    Men: 70%
  10. bodice
    part of a dress above the waist
    Women: 96%
    Men: 71%
Created on Thu Jun 19 11:31:05 EDT 2014 (updated Wed Jun 25 20:50:51 EDT 2014)

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