It largely follows gender stereotypical interest lines. In this one, my wife describes the list as "fashion related stuff". Here's another older list from a different study[0]
Interesting. I (male) recognize all but one of the "female" words in this list (and can define most of them), but recognized only 6 from the list in the article, and could define only one or two. I wonder why the article's list is so much "harder".
(I recognized and could define all of the "male" words in both lists, so I do seem to conform to this stereotype...)
"taupe" was a punchline of sorts in a very popular British TV advert back when we had 4 (maybe 3?) channels. So, people of a certain age in UK would all likely know it from that.
Higher recognition rates by males:
- codec (88, 48)
- solenoid (87, 54)
- golem (89, 56)
- mach (93, 63)
- humvee (88, 58)
- claymore (87, 589
- scimitar (86, 58)
- kevlar (93, 65)
- paladin (93, 66)
- bolshevism (85, 60)
- biped (86, 61)
- dreadnought (90, 66)
Higher recognition rates by females:
- taffeta (48, 87)
- tresses (61, 93)
- bottlebrush (58, 89)
- flouncy (55, 86)
- mascarpone (60, 90)
- decoupage (56, 86)
- progesterone (63, 92)
- wisteria (61, 89)
- taupe (66, 93)
- flouncing (67, 94)
- peony (70, 96)
- bodice (71, 96)
[0] https://www.insider.com/gender-and-vocabulary-analysis-2014-...