English Language Will Soon Contain Over 1 Million Words

Posted on January 5, 2009

Writers have plenty of words to choose from. The English language is expected to include more than 1 million words by the end of April, 2009. The Christian Science Monitor says that computes to just one word for every 1,350 speakers.

It's April 29, 2009 - plus or minus a few days. That is when the English language is expected to acquire its millionth word. This prediction comes from Global Language Monitor, an organization in Austin, Texas, which uses proprietary software to track and analyze trends in language. "Global English" is its particular focus.
A million words doesn't really seem excessive, given 1.35 billion speakers of English on the planet. That works out to only one word for every 1,350 speakers.

The website for the Global Language Monitor can be found here. Its current count is 998,773 words. The Economist takes a closer look at this word count and what counts as a word.