The idea of a lexeme, or one vocabulary item, brings us to phrases: Black Lives Matter, emotional support animal, pre-main sequence stars. Do these count as separate words in our total? Or should we just count the umbrella lexeme run? A lexeme is “a lexical unit in a language, as a word or base vocabulary item.” The lexeme of running is considered run. It’s a simple, basic word, right? But take a second to list its different word forms: runs, running, ran. A word can be defined as a “unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning.” The answer to this question is hotly debated in linguistics. But, let’s try to narrow it down a bit more than that. So, how many words are in the English language? Perhaps the best short answer is: more words than you’ll ever use.

Linguistically speaking, all these questions only scratch the surface. What’s more, now we have hashtags ( #MeToo) and emoji ( Face With Tears of Joy 😂)-do these count as words? To boot, English loves loanwords: is it time to count despacito as an English word? What about nonce words-those one-off, made-up, throwaway words that are perfectly understandable in the moment? Say, snacktabulous. Do we count VSCO girl as a word if it ends up not sticking around? What’s the first thing that comes to mind with tweet? A bird or social media? Old words fall out of use, and we don’t just mean Shakespeare’s methinks. What do we do with VHS or MySpace? And slang words come and go.

In 2019, no one could have predicted what has become a defining word of 2020: COVID-19. New words are entering the language all the time. How many words are in the English language? It would seem like a simple question, but the answer is anything but.

Basic german words in english