How Many Words are in the English Language? You’re probably asking this question; the English language has survived the centuries. It progressed from Old English to Modern English. Read through to get more information on this topic.
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How Many Words Are In The English Language?
Many people believe that the English language contains over a million words.
In fact, during a project looking at words in digitized books, researchers from Harvard University and Google estimated 1,022,000 words in 2010, with the number expected to grow by several thousand each year.
When you see a large number like this, keep in mind that it includes different spellings of the same word. It also contains many words that could be classified as archaic (they are not used in modern English).
An Ever-Expanding Vocabulary
At any time, new words can enter the language. In 2019, no one could have predicted what has become a defining word of 2020: COVID-19. This term is not going away.
Another new concept is when you hear the term Tweets and all the words that go with it. Old words fade away; for example, we no longer use Shakespearean language.
The English Dictionary
Let’s Consider how many words are in the Dictionary. The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains complete entries for 171,476 currently used words (and 47,156 obsolete words).
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and its 1993 Addenda Section contain approximately 470,000 entries.
However, the number of words in the Oxford and Webster Dictionaries differs from the number of words in English.
A Truly Limitless Word Count?
To begin, let’s be clear: knowing the number of words in the English language is nearly impossible. This is because there is no universally accepted method for determining what makes up a “word.”
The language is constantly changing and expanding. People and cultures are constantly inventing new words. In the meantime, obsolete words fade into obscurity.
To figure out how many words there are, you’d have to track every word every day, without pause. Languages are how people communicate, so they are just as alive as we are.
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Conclusion
How many words are there in total in the English language? The Corpus of Contemporary American English, for example, contains over one billion words drawn from publications, TV shows, blog websites, and other sources.
However, these comprise many variations of the same word. The English language currently encompasses a massive one million distinct words. According to the Worldwide Language Display, which tracks language usage patterns?
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