How Many Words are in English?

Another Stunning Discovery at alphaDictionary

Dr. Goodword (Robert Beard, PhD, Linguistics)

Words are Spoken.

The question, "How many words are there in English?" is based on a misunderstanding of language. It is based on the false assumptions that (1) words are objects that someone creates and (2) stores in a published dictionary. Neither assumption is true. Words that are simply spoken but never published do not enter dictionaries. That does not mean that they are not words, for language is a spoken medium, not a written one. Only about 2,400 of the world's roughly 7200 languages and dialects have writing systems, most of these created only for the translation of the Bible. If words were the things found in dictionaries, the majority of the world's languages would have no words!

In point of fact, all languages are equipped to produce however many words are necessary for communication either internally, by derivation rules (lawyer > lawyerly) and compounding (water + fall > waterfall), or externally, by borrowing from other languages. So, one answer to the question in the title is: the number of possible words in any language at any given moment is infinite, for there is no limit on the number of possible words in any human language. However, we may distinguish between possible and actual words, so how many actual words are there in English?

THANKYOU FRIGGIN JESUS SOMEONE FINALLY TOLD THE WORLD THIS!