Number of words in English
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The number of words in English is very large, but assigning a specific number to its size is more a matter of definition than of calculation:
- The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits.... there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference.[1]
Unlike other languages, there is no Academy to define officially accepted words. Neologisms are coined regularly in medicine, science and technology; some enter wide usage, others remain restricted to small circles. Foreign words used in immigrant communities often make their way into wider English usage. Archaic, dialectal, and regional words might be considered 'English' or not. How to count variant spellings, derived forms, homographs, and compounds is unclear.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) includes over 500,000 headwords, following a rather inclusive policy:
- It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang.[2]
