I was reading an article today for work and this sentence came up at the end of a paragraph.
This is also germane from a population health perspective, as environmental conditions are an important determinant of health.
Be honest, who knows the meaning of “germane” without running to online search?
Ah, ‘germane,’ my intellectually inquisitive friend, denotes that ineffable quality by which a concept, utterance, or datum maintains a pertinacious and symbiotic congruence with the subject presently under deliberation. In other words, it is that which is not an irrelevant digression into semantic detritus, but rather, a contribution of substantive pertinacity to the ongoing dialectic.
I knew it but I teach students preparing for the Cambridge exams right through to proficiency level.
It is not a word in common usage these days so I wouldn’t expect many people to know it really, not even native English speakers.
well, it sounds like german so it must mean relevant. At least from a German point of view 
I’ve heard it before but no, hadn’t memorized it.
Well of course as a native speaker I knew the word and its meaning; it’s even possible, indeed almost inevitable, that I’ve used it myself in conversation at some point.
But I think I would probably have misspelled it, adding the ‘i’ as used in the name of the feminist writer Ms. Greer.
I always post this poem when English is the subject at hand…I don’t know how anyone learns to speak it, given the chaotic spelling that (mostly) resulted from the onion-like layers of additions to the language, plus the lack of rules when the words were initially written down.
Author: a Dutchman named Gerard Nolst Trenite
Seems perfectly clear to me.
His pronunciation, presumably because of Irish accept, isn’t always 100% standard. And his “pronunciation” sounds more like pernunciation.
And lichen is more frequently pronounced the same as liken.
Ace, there are several of his pronunciations I would quibble with (including lichen), and an American or a Scot might pronounce several words very differently, but my, oh my…what a loony “system”!
Now I can only picture @Phil_MCR looking like
“Do you know what nemesis means?” - Snatch (2000)
or
#QI #shorts
Slammer slowly shaking his head in Lancashireian.