There is no way to truly answer this question; however, one can figure out a rough estimate.
Numerous experts figured out that the English language is comprised of more than a million words. In reality, researchers from Harvard University and Google in 2010 estimated that there are 1,022,000 English words and that number could grow by about 8,500 every year. When you see a substantial number like this, it is very crucial to keep in mind that this contains different sorts of identical words. It likewise has lots of words that we might call antiquated. In other words, phrases that are no longer used in contemporary English.
In the Oxford English dictionary, there are about 600,000-words that are defined in the English language. Once more, this consists of several antique words that are not in daily use any longer. This dictionary increases yearly to stay on top of new terms created to clarify new material around us or include new meaning to important words that already exist in English.
A much different number from the Oxford English dictionary would be the 171,476 words currently related to people in specific professions. These are not precisely the same words in the overall dictionary. These pertain to people’s profession, education, and passions.
It’s also difficult to establish what counts as English. The Oxford English Thesaurus of 1989 includes full definitions for 171,476 words in current use and 47,156 out-of-date words. Another 9,500 words could be added to this as subentries. Over fifty percent of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and also verbs; the remainder comprised of exclamations, mixes, prepositions, suffixes, and so on. The point is, there are over a quarter million new words in English and over a half million worldwide. If there was a more defined way to count, the total would perhaps resemble three-quarters of a million.
An Ever-Expanding Vocabulary
New words can enter into the language at any time. In 2019, no individual could have forecasted what has ended up being a defining word of 2020: COVID-19. At the same time, this term is here to stay. Another new concept is when you hear the term Tweets and all the words associated with this new terminology. Old words fall away; for example, we don’t use Shakespearean language anymore.
The introduction to lexemes, or a family of related terms, brings us to expressions like Black Lives Matter and emotional support pet. We think about them as systems, yet do we count them as singular words?
Where the English Language Came From
English is a Germanic language with many German and Dutch terminology. They share some core structures, vocabulary, as well as sound. A number of the most regularly used terms in English are Germanic; however, over half the vocabulary is stemmed from Latin and French. Throughout the years, English has been influenced by and welcomed words from various languages, and even today, it has words from many different languages. These words make up about 80% of the English language. When it comes to English, we have a vast number of terms from various places.
Some people think, why isn’t as simple as counting the words in a thesaurus? Unfortunately, the thesaurus doesn’t have enough space. The thesaurus includes key terms that a lot of individuals take to be partial words. Nonetheless, these partial words are prefixes, suffixes, and various other word types which are parts of words. We do not always think about or classify these affixes as words, but some of them can be words of their own.
Furthermore, thesaurus’ differs from one another depending on the target audience. For instance, the student’s thesaurus, for those who need to recognize the principles of a language, and scientific thesaurus with those specific terms that only deal with forensic would certainly be different. That indicates each thesaurus will have a different variety of words, with some words turning up in countless dictionaries while various other overly technical words do not.
Today, online thesaurus enable us to search as well as record English words freely. The thesaurus makes it possible for synonym replacement phrases to keep growing.
Digital development allows us to capture a collection of phrases like never before. A corpus is yet a different method to envision the English language. A corpus most regularly explains a substantial or detailed collection of imaginative phrases, to grammatically describe a whole set of particular etymological within a language. In other words, we are able to go online and read the different books with different genres.
The Vocabulary of an Individual
It’s safe to claim that the individual’s typical vocabulary is less than the complete range of English words. There is just no other way to identify and use day-to-day words in the English language.
According to some research, the ordinary 20-year-old English speaker uses around 42,000 words. In a 2011 conference with the BBC, lexicographer Susie Dent estimated that while an English speaker may identify around 40,000 words, they proactively utilize 20,000 of them.
The reality is English-speaking adults use between 20,000 and 30,000 words. The good news is that they are probably able to recognize additional words when reading by using context clues.
Conclusion
All in all, how many words are there in the English language? One famous corpus is the Corpus of Contemporary American English, which consists of more than one billion words drawn from publications, TV programs, blog websites, and many more sources. Yet, these consist of numerous variations of the same specific word. According to the Worldwide Language Display, which tracks language usage patterns, the English language currently covers a massive one million distinctive words.
Contained in such English language listings are bunches and many clinical words that many do not acknowledge yet, naturally, still certify as words. They’re daunting; nevertheless, they are part of the working life of some people.
How many words are there in English? We can only make an educated guess. Words are regularly added and modified, so it would be difficult to choose an ever-evolving number.
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Making an estimation about the number of words in the English language is necessary so that you can analyze the number of words you need to know in order to be fluent.
Being an English learner, it is a natural urge to find out how many words are there in the English language. The exact answer to this question is quite difficult to find out but you can undergo a rough estimation to analyze this curiosity.
The English language has more than a million words, according to many experts. In reality, according to 2010 research from Harvard University and Google, there are 1,022,000 English words, and that number is expected to rise by about 8,500 each year.
It is very important to keep in mind that this contains various kinds of identical words when you see a large number like this. It also contains a large number of words that could be considered archaic. In other words, expressions that are no longer used in English today.
About 600,000 words in the English language are defined in the Oxford English dictionary. Once more, this contains a number of archaic words that are no longer commonly used. This dictionary grows every year to keep up with new terms developed to explain new information around us or to add new meaning to significant words already existing in English.
The 171,476 words currently used to describe individuals in particular professions represent a very different number from the one found in the Oxford English dictionary. These words aren’t exactly the same in the entire dictionary. These are related to people’s occupations, qualifications, and interests.
Determining what constitutes English is also challenging. Full definitions are provided for 47,156 out-of-date words and 171,476 currently used words in the 1989 edition of the Oxford English Thesaurus. This could be subdivided into 9,500 additional words. Most of these words (over 50%) are nouns, with about a quarter being adjectives and verbs as well.
The remaining words include exclamations, mixtures, prepositions, suffixes, and other words. In any case, there are now more than a quarter million new words in English and more than half a million new words globally. The total might resemble three-quarters of a million if there were a more precise way to count. There are several English dictionary apps that you can use to learn these words.
Vocabulary is continuously increasing
New words keep on emerging in the language all the time. Nobody could have predicted COVID-19 would become a defining phase of 2020 in 2019. However, this phrase is a permanent one. When you hear the word “Tweets” and all the words associated with this new terminology, that’s another novel idea. Old words fade away; we no longer speak in Shakespearean terms, for instance. The best way to improve English vocabulary is to make a comparison of the old and new words. Vocabulary building is an ongoing process for every language learner.
The origin of the English language
English is a Germanic language with a large vocabulary of German and Dutch words. They sound similar and have some basic structural and lexical similarities. There are some Germanic words that are frequently used in English, but more than half of the language’s vocabulary comes from Latin and French.
English has welcomed and been influenced by words from many different languages over the years, and it still contains words from many different languages today. About 80% of all words in the English language are those. We have many words in English that come from different languages.
Why can’t it be as easy as counting the words in a thesaurus, some people wonder? Unfortunately, there isn’t enough room in the thesaurus. There are important terms in the thesaurus that many people mistake for partial words. Prefixes, suffixes in English, and other word types that are parts of words make up these partial words. These affixes are often not considered or categorized as words, but some of them can stand alone as words.
Additionally, thesaurus variations depend on the intended audience. For instance, a scientific thesaurus with those specific terms that only deal with forensics would undoubtedly be different from a student’s thesaurus for those who need to understand the fundamentals of a language.
That means that each thesaurus will contain a unique set of words, with some appearing in numerous dictionaries while others, particularly those that are overly technical, do not.
The advancement of digital technology has made it possible for us to collect phrases like never before. A corpus is yet another alternative approach to understanding the English language. In order to grammatically describe a complete set of specific etymological within a language, a corpus typically explains a significant or detailed collection of imaginative phrases. In other words, we have the option to read a variety of books from various genres online.
The vocabulary of an individual
It is safe to say that the person’s typical vocabulary is less extensive than the entire vocabulary of English words. There is simply no other way to recognize and utilize common English words.
The average 20-year-old English speaker uses about 42,000 words, according to some studies. Lexicographer Susie Dent estimated that while an English speaker may recognize about 40,000 words, they actively use 20,000 of them in a 2011 conference with the BBC.
Adults who speak English use between 20,000 and 30,000 words on average. The good news is that they probably use context cues to recognize additional words while reading. If you are an English learner and looking out for ways to improve your English vocabulary, get yourself enrolled in italki to learn English online.
With italki, you can learn at your own pace and improve your English vocabulary and pronunciation. The English teacher online will enable you to understand and learn English concepts and phrases in the comfort of your home. In fact, they will also provide you with some practical exposure to speaking English publicly.
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Frequently asked questions about words in English
Q. What are the 7 question words in English?
A. An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as what, which, when, where, who, whom, whose, why, whether, and how. They are sometimes called wh-words because in English most of them start with wh- (compare Five Ws).
Q. What are the challenges in learning English vocabulary?
A. Pronunciation, Spelling, Slang and Colloquialisms, and fluency are some of the most common challenges.
Q. What is the best way to improve vocabulary in English?
A. Develop a reading habit, use the dictionary and thesaurus, play word games, use flashcards, and use mnemonics.
Conclusion
So, how many words are there in the English language altogether? The Corpus of Contemporary American English, which includes words from publications, TV shows, blogs, and many other sources, is one well-known corpus. However, they are all different spellings of the same word.
The Worldwide Language Display, which monitors language usage patterns, estimates that there are currently one million unique words in the English language. Do not panic with such a huge number. Go easy and start building your vocabulary gradually.
Use different resources such as developing a reading habit, using the dictionary and thesaurus, playing word games, using flashcards, and using mnemonics to boost your vocabulary set.
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If we want to talk about how many words there are in English, there are three key numbers to remember: more than a million total words, about 170,000 words in current use, and 20,000-30,000 words used by each individual person.
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Many people estimate that there are more than a million words in the English language. In fact, during a project looking at words in digitised books, researchers from Harvard University and Google in 2010, they estimated a total of 1,022,000 words and that the number would grow by several thousand each year. When you see a massive number like this, though, it’s important to remember that this includes different forms of the same word. It also includes lots of words that we could call archaic (they are not used in modern English).
In the second edition of the Oxford English dictionary, there are approximately 600,000 word forms defined. Again, this includes many old-fashioned words that are not in common use any more. The dictionary also expands every year to keep up with new words that are invented to describe the world around us, or to include new meanings for words that already exist in English. A more useful number from the Oxford English Dictionary would be the 171,476 words that are in current use. That means there are examples of each of these words being used recently.
That’s still a lot of words, though, and doesn’t reflect the number of words that English speakers actually use. For that number, let’s look at a recent study by the people at testyourvocab.com who say that most adult native-speakers of English have a vocabulary of 20,000-35,000 words. Obviously, these are not the same words and everyone’s vocabulary will include different words according to their career, education and interested.
So, let’s look back at the question. If we want to talk about how many words there are in English, there are three key numbers to remember: more than a million total words, about 170,000 words in current use, and 20,000-30,000 words used by each individual person.
How about you, though? How many words do you think you know and what are you doing to expand your vocabulary to the 20,000-30,000 that an English native speaker uses?
Wil
Wil is a writer, teacher, learning technologist and keen language learner. He’s taught English in classrooms and online for nearly 10 years, trained teachers in using classroom and web technology, and written e-learning materials for several major websites. He speaks four languages and is currently looking for another one to start learning.
Maybe you’re a parent, and your kid is coming home each week with increasingly extensive vocab lists. Or maybe you’re a student yourself, and each week the readings your professor assigns contain more and more convoluted vocab. Pneuomonoultramicropscophicsilicovolcanoconiosis, anyone? Either way, you might find yourself wondering: just how many words are there in English, anyway?
Complications in the Count
The unsatisfying truth is that it’s hard to put an exact number on how many words are in any given language. Yes, there are dictionaries with numerically labeled entries, which would allow us to easily estimate a total word count. But dictionaries aren’t actually comprehensive lists of every word in a language. Instead, they pick out the words that are most commonly and widely used, and tend to exclude archaic terms. They also often don’t include the newest words in a language. All languages are constantly expanding, and words are being created every day. It would be impossible for a dictionary to update frequently enough to contain every single new word at all times.
And, as Merriam-Webster points out, there’s some ambiguity over what constitutes a unique word. A single word with different tenses may be one or more words, and a single spelling of a word with multiple meanings also may be counted once or multiple times, such as “rose.”
Because of all these factors, the number of words listed individually in a dictionary is probably lower than the number in the language as a whole. However, dictionaries can be used to estimate the number of words in current use in a language.
How Many Words are There, Actually?
Still, you might say: even taking all that into account, surely we can make some sort of estimate? And yes, we can, though those estimates might vary widely.
One of the highest estimates of the number of words in the English language was made by Harvard University during a collaboration with Google in 2010. This study estimated that there are just over a million words in the English language.
Most scholars, though, agree that this number is somewhat inflated – in part by the counting of similar words – and look to dictionaries for a more realistic guide. Merriam-Webster, as of 1993, estimated around 470,000. And the English Wiktionary, which is updated frequently and which contains more slang and unofficial language, has around 520,000 words.
On the lowest end of the spectrum, we can look at the Oxford English Dictionary’s list of words in current use. According to this list, as of 1989, there are around 171,000 words circulating in the English language. Clearly, then, there is a big range in how many words you count in the English language, depending on how you define a unique word and how else you set your parameters.
What About Other Languages?
But is this number normal? We might assume that all languages have roughly equal numbers of words, but in fact, this isn’t always the case. For one, ancient languages tended to have fewer words than modern languages, in part because of a reduction in the number of ‘things’ a speaker had to identify. Ancient Norse, for instance, didn’t need a word for ‘internet’ or ‘Teletubby.’
Also, language has diversified as it evolved. For example, many ancient languages actually only have two to five words for different colors, with many languages lacking a word for yellow or green. In fact, studies of languages have shown that most languages start out with one of two color words: dark and light. Over time, these color terms diversified to include first red, then blue and other colors. Now, all languages do not have the same number of color terms as English. For instance, Mandarin doesn’t have a term for pink; they simply say ‘light red’. On the other hand, Russian has a specific word for light blue, whereas we, in English, simply call it ‘light blue.’
So how does English compare to other languages? According to a list of dictionaries by number of words, the largest dictionary in the world is a Korean dictionary, Woori Mal Saem, which includes both North and South Korean dialects. This dictionary has over 1,100,000 entries. Other dictionaries with high word counts include the Portuguese Aulete Digital dictionary, which has over 800,000 words; the Finnish RedFox Pro dictionary, with over 800,000 words; and the Authority of Kurdish Language Dictionary, with around 744,000 words.
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How many words are in the English language? It would seem like a simple question, but the answer is anything but.
New words are entering the language all the time. In 2019, no one could have predicted what has become a defining word of 2020: COVID-19. At the same time, existing words evolve. What’s the first thing that comes to mind with tweet? A bird or social media? Old words fall out of use, and we don’t just mean Shakespeare’s methinks. What do we do with VHS or MySpace? And slang words come and go. Do we count VSCO girl as a word if it ends up not sticking around?
To boot, English loves loanwords: is it time to count despacito as an English word? What about nonce words—those one-off, made-up, throwaway words that are perfectly understandable in the moment? Say, snacktabulous. What’s more, now we have hashtags (#MeToo) and emoji (Face With Tears of Joy 😂)—do these count as words?
Linguistically speaking, all these questions only scratch the surface. So, how many words are in the English language? Perhaps the best short answer is: more words than you’ll ever use. But, let’s try to narrow it down a bit more than that.
What even is a word, anyways?
The answer to this question is hotly debated in linguistics. A word can be defined as a “unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning.”
Take run. It’s a simple, basic word, right? But take a second to list its different word forms: runs, running, ran. Do these count as separate words in our total? Or should we just count the umbrella lexeme run? A lexeme is “a lexical unit in a language, as a word or base; vocabulary item.” The lexeme of running is considered run.
The idea of a lexeme, or one vocabulary item, brings us to phrases: Black Lives Matter, emotional support animal, pre-main sequence stars. We think of them as units, but do we count them as single words?
And what about the loanwords we mentioned above? Casa is part of English, but do we count vamonos? You’d be hard-pressed to find a native speaker of English who doesn’t know casa means “house.” It’s been naturalized from Spanish, meaning it’s been “introduced or adopted (foreign practices, words, etc.) into a country or into general use.” Should we consider vamonos (“let’s go”) an English word?
Then there are variants (“a different spelling, pronunciation, or form of the same word”). Do doughnuts and donuts count? (When it comes to doughnuts, we tend to think the more the merrier.) More importantly, what about dialects and nonstandard forms (e.g., ain’t) that historically have not been “counted” as words?
And how many vocalizations (e.g., Blergh! Ack!) would make the list?
English is, of course, spoken around the world. Speakers of American English may not recognize terms common in world Englishes, such as South African English or Indian English. Do you know what spondulicks (British), jol (South African), or chuddies (Indian) mean?
English is a Germanic language, related to German, Dutch, Yiddish, and the like. They share some core structures, vocabulary, and sounds. Many of the most frequently used words in English are Germanic (not German) in origin, but over half its vocabulary is derived from Latin (much through French). Over the years, English has been influenced by and adopted words from various languages, and today, it contains words from hundreds of different languages. These words are estimated to make up about 80% of the English language.
Curious about which words English has taken from other languages? Read about them here.
While we have countless loanwords, we also have countless numbers. Here’s a thought experiment: we could count to infinity, not that we recommend doing that. If we counted every word for every number between one and 1 million (one, two, three …), that would make a cool million words right there.
How many words are in the dictionary?
Thinking about the number of words in the English language brings up the inevitable question: why can’t we just count up the words in a dictionary to get the answer?
For one thing, dictionaries are limited by space; for another, dictionaries count words in different ways and therefore differ in the number of entries they have. Dictionaries include headwords (also called lemmas) that a lot of people consider to be, authoritatively, words, but these also include prefixes, suffixes, combining forms, and other word forms and elements—many of which we don’t necessarily think of or categorize as words.
Dictionaries also differ in scope and audience. For example, there are learner’s dictionaries, for those who need to know the basics of a language, and scientific dictionaries that have those specific terms that only, say, a forensic nephrologist (membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, anyone?) would ever use. That means each dictionary will have a different number of headwords, with some words appearing in multiple dictionaries while other highly technical words do not.
In general, unabridged dictionaries generally include over 300,000 entries, depending on how the dictionary counts an “entry”—and we’re back to the same thorny question about the different versions of run and all its inflections, or “change in the shape of a word, generally by affixation.”
Today, online dictionaries allow us to enter and document English like never before! This allows dictionaries to keep growing and expanding beyond their published editions.
How do you get a new word in a dictionary? Find out here.
What can we learn from corpora? (And what does that word mean, anyways?)
Digital technology lets us capture words like never before, too. A corpus is yet another way to capture a snapshot of the English language. Corpus most commonly refers to a large or comprehensive collection of creative works, such as all of the writings of a particular author. The word is used in a more specific way in linguistics to refer to an entire set of a particular linguistic element within a language, such as words.
One popular corpus is the Corpus of Contemporary American English, which contains more than 1 billion words drawn from magazines, TV shows, blogs, and more sources, but these include multiple instances of the same word. According to the Global Language Monitor, which tracks language usage trends, the English language currently tops a whopping 1 million distinct words.
Included in such English language lists are tons and tons of scientific words that many of us don’t know but, of course, still qualify as words. They’re intimidating (think recombinant tissue plasminogen activator, electroencephalogram, and ohmmeter), but they are understood by someone—or maybe even two or three someones!
So, what’s the answer?
Perhaps the answer in this case is a different question: how many words do speakers of a language know? That answer is similarly murky, but according to at least one study, the average 20-year-old native English speaker knows an average of 42,000 words. In a 2011 interview with the BBC, lexicographer Susie Dent estimated that while an English speaker may know around 40,000 words, they only actively use about 20,000 of them.
Language and words are always changing, so it would be next to impossible to pin down an ever-evolving number. But now for the good news: that means even at the low end of estimations, there are far more words for most people to discover. We’ve got you covered with our Word of the Day, our slang dictionary, Thesaurus.com, and other resources—because there are plenty (plenty!) more words for you to add to your own list of 40,000 and counting.