# How many words in the English language?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-words-in-the-english-language/155277>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 15, 2003, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-words-in-the-english-language/155277 "2003-02-15T18:18:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Steel\_Wheels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Steel\_Wheels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steel_Wheels)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2003, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-words-in-the-english-language/155277/1 "2003-02-15T18:18:51Z")

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A bit of a trivia question for all of you…How many words are there in the English language? Not including slang, I would guesstimate it would have to be in the millions. Has anyone ever actually counted?

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**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2003, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-words-in-the-english-language/155277/2 "2003-02-15T18:59:05Z")

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According to [Wordorigins](http://www.wordorigins.org/number.htm), estimates at the number of words in the total vocabulary start at 3 million words, and go up from there. OED2 contains 290,000 entries, with 616,500 word forms.

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**Author:** ![Popup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2003, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-words-in-the-english-language/155277/3 "2003-02-17T13:53:57Z")

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This ia a frequently asked, but never adequately answered, question, mainly for the fact that it is very vague.

Quoting from [worldwide words](http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm):

> [@](#):
>
> One of the more common questions that arrive for the Q&A section asks how many words there are in the English language. Almost as common are requests for the average size of a person’s vocabulary. These sound like easy questions; I have to tell you that they’re indeed easy to ask. But they’re almost impossible to answer satisfactorily, because it all depends what you mean by word and by vocabulary (or even English).
> 
> What we mean by word sounds obvious, but it?s not. Take a verb like climb. The rules of English allow you to generate the forms climbs, climbed, climbable, and climbing, the nouns climb and climber (and their plurals climbs and climbers), compounds such as climb-down and climbing frame, and phrasal verbs like climb on, climb over, and climb down. Now, here?s the question you?ve got to answer: are all these distinct words, or do you lump them all together under climb?

It’s a good article, and I think you’d enjoy reading it!

This doesn’t stop people from asking though. There are several threads on the subject here:  
[Does English really have more words than any other language on earth?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=160142)  
[How many words in the average person’s vocabulary?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=160593)  
[Linguists: Largest vocabulary?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85861)  
[What is the largest language?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=155166)

I don’t think we need any more threads on the subject.