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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.
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.
There is one count that puts the English vocabulary at about 1 million words — but that count presumably includes words such as Latin species names, prefixed and suffixed words, scientific terminology, jargon, foreign words of extremely limited English use and technical acronyms.
The English Dictionary. First, let’s look at how many words are in the Dictionary. The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use (and 47,156 obsolete words).
According to the second edition of the reference book, published in 1989, they have full entries for 171,476 words in addition to 47,156 terms that are obsolete. That tally, however, doesn’t take...
How many words are there in the dictionary? No, you won’t find a single dictionary that includes anywhere close to the total million words that can be considered part of English.
The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the current edition originally published in 1989, contains approximately 600,000 words. Of those 600,000 words, a little more than 171,000 words see common and regular use in modern English.
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.
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
The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, and over 1,000 years of English.