English to Reach One Million Words According to Global Language Monitor

According to the Global Language Monitor (GLM), the English language will most likely pass one million words sometime in April 2009. How could this institution possibly predict this milestone? Its algorithm tracks the use of English words in print media, unabridged dictionaries and on the Internet (for more information on their methods, click here ).

So far, its "Wordclock" stands at 998,773. While other articles dissect GLM's methodology and whether the one million mark really means anything anyway, let's look at the basic magnitude of this claim: We English-speakers have many options to express ourselves. But do we take advantage of our large vocabulary? Should we?

A site established by Wayne State University aims to bring back unusual words into our vocabularies. Dubbing themselves Word Warriors, the site ( located here ) lets users nominate words they would like to see become popular again. So far, visitors have voiced their desire to see words such as bamboozle, abecedarian, tergiversate, and insouciance used more frequently in everyday language.

The Word Warriors express alarm at our limited vocabularies and insists that we're depriving ourselves of English's "inherent beauty and agility." Are they just being supercilious elitists? Or do they have a point?

Actually, there can be a real risk of letting words fall out of vogue. Last September, the editors at Collins dictionary announced that to make room for 2,000 new words for their latest edition, they were planning to excise 24 words from their pages. The Telegraph reported that words such as fusby, malison, and apodeictic were on the endangered list.

On the other hand, if you were to use the phrase such as, "The fusby man was uncharacteristically agrestic at the business meeting," you may well anger followers of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. Strunk and White admonishes writers who favor extravagant words over plain, issuing the edict: "Avoid fancy words." They further explain: "Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able." The grammar gurus even recommend that writers should use Anglo-Saxon words over Latin-rooted ones.

So should we communicate plainly and run a better chance of being understood, or should we try to hold onto our Latinesque or fancy words and risk bamboozling others?

Putting a little oomph to your speaking and writing using peculiar words seems more fun than harmful. Precision matters of course, and if you're rooting out your thesaurus for every sentence you may have a problem. So at the risk of annoying more stringent grammarians, I believe that throwing around a "ebullient" or a "lachrymose" from time to time spices up communication and should be encouraged.

And what's wrong with having a little variety in our language? After all, apparently by this April, we'll have over a million words to choose from.

Sources:

"Collins dictionary asks public to rescue outdated words." Telegraph. 22 Sept. 2008. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3046488/Collins-dictionary-asks-public-to-rescue-outdated-words.html

Payack, Paul. "The number of words in the English Language." The Global Language Monitor. http://www.languagemonitor.com/number-of-words-in-english

Strunk, William and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, 4^th Edition. Needham Heights, Mass.: Longman Publishers, 2000.

Word Warriors. Wayne State University. http://www.wordwarriors.wayne.edu/