C2 English Vocabulary List, Proficient CEFR Words

C2 is near-native. Vocabulary work is about precision, connotation, and idiom, not basic meaning.

Years of immersion plus deliberate study.

About C2

C2 is near-native. The active vocabulary is 16,000+ words, but the work isn't about adding more; it's about precision, connotation, and idiom. You learn that prevaricate isn't a synonym for lie, that bask and wallow take different objects, and that the order of adjectives in English isn't a matter of taste. Subtle register shifts (formal/informal, written/spoken, regional) become deliberate choices.

Who this list is for

If you can read poetry, write a publishable essay, and pass for a long-term resident in conversation, you're around C2. Reaching C2 typically requires years of immersion plus deliberate study. Only a small fraction of IELTS candidates score Band 9 (the C2 equivalent), and most native speakers don't actually pass C2 exams without preparation.

How to study

At C2 there's no shortcut to volume. Read literary fiction, academic texts, and broadsheet journalism. Pay attention to what feels off when you write; that's usually a register or collocation gap. Use spaced repetition for rare words and idioms you want to add to active vocabulary. The work at this level is endless and incremental; vocabulary growth doesn't stop, it just becomes invisible.

The list (2272 words)

Some example sentences come from the Tatoeba Project (tatoeba.org), CC BY 2.0 FR. The rest were written for MindDory. Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR.

Where do the words after this list come from?

A list has an end. The words you keep for good usually turn up somewhere else — in a page you read, a show you watched, or a conversation you had — one at a time, and rarely at the level you planned for.

MindDory connects to Claude, Cursor, and other assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol, so a word you meet while you are chatting is saved to your deck as a flashcard without you leaving the conversation. There is no copy and paste, no CSV export, and no browser extension.

How the assistant connection works

Choosing an app