How Many Words Are There In English?

Nobody really knows. It's impossible to count the number of words in any language, both because it's hard to define what is a word (is trigger-happy one word or two?) and because words evolve faster than dictionaries can be written. In English it's even harder, because no language is more eager to adopt foreign words and create new ones.
What does seem sure is that English has the world's largest vocabulary . The second Oxford English Dictionary has 171,476 entries for words in use today, plus around 50,000 archaic ones. As many of these words have derivatives, (e.g. "extinct" derives from "extinguish"), you have to add about 1,000 more. Of course, English's rapidly growing technical (especially computer-related) vocabulary is largely absent; the next edition of the OED will certainly be larger.
The best guess you can make at the real vocabulary of English is therefore well over 250,000 and probably near 750,000; some linguists put it at over a million if you include rapidly changing and usually short-lived terms like "happy slapping" and "hot-desking."

Add Comment

Report