Anyone know how many words are in the english language?

[Y-INCISON6DEATH]

If anyone have any idea watsoever, then please let me know, haha i'm doing a little research, and i need to know the closest estiment to how many words are in the english language?

[H3WMW]

I have no idea where to look for that.

[Devil's Advocate]

It's impossible to know to any kind of precision beyond an order-of-magnitude.

I once read that Webster's and the OED each contain about half the language. (With alot of overlap of course - buying both won't get you the whole language!)

I've just taken a look at their websites, and while the OED doesn't seem ot want ot say how many words itdefines, Webster's say it has 470,000.


So, the answer to the question would be: about a million.

[ElfDude]

The following is according to Oxford:

There is no single sensible answer to this question. It is impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it is so hard to decide what counts as a word. Is dog one word, or two (a noun meaning `a kind of animal', and a verb meaning `to follow persistently')? If we count it as two, then do we count inflections separately too (dogs plural noun, dogs present tense of the verb). Is dog-tired a word, or just two other words joined together? Is hot dog really two words, since we might also find hot-dog or even hotdog?

It is also difficult to decide what counts as `English'. What about medical and scientific terms? Latin words used in law, French words used in cooking, German words used in academic writing, Japanese words used in martial arts? Do you count Scots dialect? Youth slang? Computing jargon?

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).

This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

[Y-INCISON6DEATH]

The english language, has around estimating, half a millions words, including, plural, past tense, future tense, ect... does not count with foreign or scientific words, and does not count slang.

therefore, count 50,000,000 words, how many words does a person use every day, counting, either how much they talk or if they talk less, an average person says pretty much about, 1,000, - 3,000. words, does not include songs or slangs. then every day, in a about 365 days, (a year) an average person would say just about, 365,000 - 1,095,000 words in year, these only include, words that are repeatly said. not slang, singing songs or, other foreign words.

anyone have any questions please e-mail me at, deicide6funder@aol.com

[ElfDude]

I work with a Chinese guy who claims to know nearly 20,000 English words. He gets by okay.

That's a lot more words than I knew in French when I was living in France, and I got by just fine too.

[Y-INCISON6DEATH]

I took russian, for two years and just about i think i know around 1000 words or less, so.....i could pretty much get by in russian pretty good for now....hahah!

[Sir Myghin]

so many words, words in the hands of incapable can be a dangerous tool.

[Kares4Rush]

did you remember the word solopsism?

[Walkinghairball]

Hey Kares, don't forget, "Great ooglie-mooglie", and "Hack-pithewey!"

[awip2062]

According to my research, there are 1560 words (and their derivatives) in the English language that make up more than 80% of what we read and write.