My seven year old nephew called tonight to ask me how many words are in the English language and how long it would take a person to write all of them. And he really, sincerely expected me to know the answers.
It's nice to have someone think you're that smart. :)
Faith is Key
7 years ago
3 comments:
Just in case you were wondering...
"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. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).
This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million."
(www.askoxford.com)
haha... That is cute.
You know, if I wanted to ask that question, you would be one of the three people I would ask (the other two would be Joel and George).
The nice thing about teaching: my kids think I know everything!
And they also believe I have limitless strength.
Finally I'm getting my due.
-Joel
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