How Many Words Are in the English Language? [2024]

English words

The 171,476 terms now in use from the Oxford English Dictionary might be a more helpful figure.

The number of words in the English language is reportedly above a million, according to several people. In actuality, researchers from Harvard University and Google predicted in 2010 that there were 1,022,000 words overall and that number would increase by a few thousand per year as part of a project looking at terms in digitized books. It’s crucial to keep in mind that when you see a large figure like this, it comprises several spellings of the same word. It also has a lot of what we may term antiquated words (they are not used in modern English).

There are over 600,000 word forms defined in the second edition of the Oxford English dictionary. Once more, this has a lot of archaic terms that are no longer widely used. Every year, new words are created to describe the world around us, and the dictionary is updated to include these new terms or to provide new definitions to words that already exist in English. The 171,476 terms now in use from the Oxford English Dictionary might be a more helpful figure. It follows that there are recent examples of each of these words being utilized.

In 2024, the question of how many words are in the English language remains complex and intriguing. Estimating the total number is challenging due to the language’s dynamic and ever-evolving nature. English is known for its vast and flexible vocabulary, influenced by historical developments, global interactions, and technological advancements. Major dictionaries, like the Oxford English Dictionary, list hundreds of thousands of words, but even these figures do not capture every slang term, regional dialect, or technical jargon. Additionally, new words are constantly being coined, and some old ones fade away, making the total number of English words difficult to pin down.

However, that still represents a large portion of the total number of words that English people really use. Let’s look at a recent study from testyourvocab.com, which found that the majority of adult native English speakers had a vocabulary of between 20,000 and 35,000 words. These are obviously not the same words, and each person’s vocabulary will differ depending on their employment, level of education, and areas of interest.

So let’s go back to the original query. There are more than a million words in the English language overall, 170,000 words are now in use, and each person uses between 20,000 and 30,000 words every day. These three figures are important to keep in mind while discussing the language’s word count.

But how about you? What steps are you taking to increase your vocabulary to the 20,000–30,000 words that an English native speaker employs, and how many words do you believe you know?