Somebody please answer me this time!?

Question

How many words are there in the english language? Could you please show me a list/link with the number of words in all of the (common) languages? I would like to see which languages have the most complex vocabularies, and thought this would be good for comparison.

Thanks a lot!

Sorry about posting this again, but no one answered last time.

Answer 1

approximately 988,968 words in the English Language
There are fewer than 100,000 words in the French language

http://www.languagemonitor.com/wst_page7.html


Or:
Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Volume 1. Oxford University Press, 1989. "In addition to the headwords of main entries, the Dictionary contains 157,000 combinations and derivatives in bold type, and 169,000 phrases and combinations in bold italic type, making a total of 616,500 word-forms."

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.

Google number of words in the English Language

Answer 2

A large word-base has nothing to do with a language being complex. So are you looking for complexity or absolute volume of words? It is almost impossible to get an accurate number of words within a language. Words are retired from use as well as the dictionary every year. The number of English words in the U.S. most differ from the U.K. greatly. I think your best chances of finding what you are looking for is to go to the Webster's Dictionary web site. Good luck with your project.

Answer 3

I have an unabridged dictionary abouy 5" thick. Contains all the words. Only thing is it's very old. We now have words that didn't exist then. But you can find almost any word in the English language in it. Go out and buy a new one. You will never need another dictionary. All the words in the world plus slang will be in it.

Answer 4

I'll answer you, sort of. I don't know how many words are in the English language. If you are concerned enough that you are asking on Yahoo twice, why don't you do your own research to find out on the computer you must have and then research the other questions you are interested in also. I seriously doubt that many people are as interested in these concerns as you are so it seems like a good project for you to do.

Answer 5

According to this website, there are 998,968 words in English, counting obsolete words and slang and purple words and technical terms and loan words from other languages. and everything else.

http://www.languagemonitor.com/wst_page7.html

But try to find a dictionary with more than 250,000 words!

OOOPSIE!! I just checked up above, and somebody beat me to it. Is Ooopsie a word? If not,then make that 998,969 words in English.

Answer 6

silly, there aren't any words in the english dictionary. because english people didn't invent english. english is a mix of a lot of other languages that came and changed. thus there is no such thing as dictionaries. there is no such things and computers too. nah im just kidding, i just wanted to answer this but i couldn't.

Answer 7

I have a dictionary that has the definitions of 169,000 words. But I've had it for a long time so there are probably a lot more than that now.

Answer 8

I'm not quite sure. Maybe 20 thousand.

Chinese has 50 thousand.

Try just browsing the web. I'm not sure if anyone here would kniw the answer off the top of their heads.

Interesting question, BTW =)

Answer 9

That's because no one knows for sure. Including scientific words. it's somewhere in between 500,000 and 1 million.

Answer 10

words are always being created and discarded you cant have a complete list
I.E. Google is now a verb