how many words in a dictionary
Word Count College-size dictionaries typically include almost 200,000 words (using a formula that counts each separately listed word or word-form); unabridged dictionaries from 300,000 to 600,000 or so. But each of these words is listed not for any intrinsic reason, but because a lexicographer decided it was useful to include. How Many Words? You wonât find two that agree on what to list. Almost every word in the language has this fuzzy penumbra of inflected forms, separate senses and compounds, some to a much greater extent than climb. To take a famous case, the entry for set in the Oxford English Dictionary runs to 60,000 words. The noun alone has 47 separate senses listed. Are all these distinct words?