Anybody knows how many words are in english exists ?? are they all noted in english dictionary ??

Question

I want exact no. of english words, used in english

Answer 1

There are many problems in knowing even how to COUNT "words" -- some of which I'll mention below. But what we CAN say is that there is NO English dictionary that includes every word. This is for many reasons, including the fact that even "unabridged dictionaries" do not include all the scientific names in use, and cannot keep completely up to date with every word, since new ones are always being coined.

At any rate, the number of *dictionary entries* in the most extensive unabridged dictionaries is slightly under a half million, so that would be a reasonable baseline and an estimate of a million is understandable, though not necessarily all that helpful

Anyway, here's where the problems begin. The question is WHAT do you include as a "distinct word" to list? For instance:

1) RELATED FORMS

a) Do you count just the 'root form' (called a "lexeme")** or all the forms that are derived from it? e.g., do you just include "find" or do you add in the various forms finds, finding, found as separate words? Do you count "finder" separately? (and also the plural and possessive forms?)

**http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lexeme

b) Do you count noun & verb forms of the same root?

c) When do you treat the different meanings of a noun (or any other word part) as a distinct word? (cf. "run" with the meaning "creek", "flaw" (as in a stocking), "scoring play in baseball", etc. )



2) COMPOUNDS
a) How do you count COMPOUND words - you have "run" "away" and "home" -- are the nouns "run", "runaway" and "homerun" distinct?

b) Related to compounds -- What about NUMBERS -- you can create new numbers ad infinitum! Does each one count as a new word? (More likely you'd want to count just one [or zero!] to twenty, thirty, forty...hundred, thousand, etc.)

c) How far in series like "greatgrandfather" "greatgreatgrandfather" etc are we to count?



3) WORDS OF LIMITED USE

a) DIALECTS - when a word is found only in one or a limited number of dialects, do you count it?

b) technical terms limited to one field (e.g., medicine, law)

c) foreign words (when are they added in as "English words"?)

d) Archaic/obsolete/rarely used words -- when do we stop counting these (Does anything that has EVER been an English word count?)

The following articles lay out these and similar problems with counting words in the language:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutenglish/numberwords?view=uk
http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/?nav=tap3
http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/drgw004.html

Answer 2

It's hard to put an exact number; the language is constantly changing. The Oxford Dictionary has about 500,000.

Answer 3

Ahhh yes. The feminist dictionary. It's somewhere between the Fantasy and Sci-Fi section at the library. The last time I saw it I wrote down some sammich recipes in it along with directions to the kitchen.

Answer 4

well, instead ofbeing lazt and asking us, go open Oxford's English Dictionary. it is THE official dictionary of english,. If it isn't in there, it's probaly a different language... or ebonics.

Answer 5

With the scientific lingo included, there are approximately 1,000,000 words in the English language.

Answer 6

Oxford English Dictionairy has over 600,000

Answer 7

You can't handle the truth.