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The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition In the introduction to the 4th and 5th editions, it is mentioned that more than 10,000 words have been added, thus the total for the 5th edition will be more than 370,000 words. [24] [failed verification] Finnish: 350,000
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.
In this article, we’ll be looking at how many words are in the English language. We’ll also look at how many words the average person knows. Finally, we’ll compare the number of words in English to the number of words found in other languages.
It has been estimated that the vocabulary of English includes roughly 1 million words (although most linguists would take that estimate with a chunk of salt, and some have said they wouldn't be surprised if it is off the mark by a quarter-million); that tally includes the myriad names of chemicals and other scientific entities.
It might be impossible to figure out how many English words there are, but we definitely know what the most used word is—it’s the, which accounts for around 4 percent of the words...
“Most English-speaking adults know between 20,000 and 30,000 words,” Dr. Crowley says. Is that more than you thought? Well, the news gets even better—in addition to those many thousands...
“The average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is around 20,000 words, while his passive vocabulary is around 40,000 words.” The Value of Word Lists. While it’s not 100 percent clear how many words are in the English language, we know how important it is to compile the most complete lists of terms we can.
As of March 2020, according to the “ About Us ” section of the website, OED provides “…the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.” This number—600,000—includes obsolete words, common words, and jargon.
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.
Global Language Monitor’s official estimate of the number of words in the English language as of November 11, 2022 is: 1,074,372.4. Official Estimate of the Number of English Words Created Every Day. 14.7 words Per Day. English has continued to churn out about 14.7 neologisms per day — about 5366 words a year.