One-million English words

Russell Jackson writes in The Scotsman: English is spoken by more than 1.35 billion people worldwide, and it will soon celebrate a new milestone -- that is, one million words. The report says that a new word is created every 98 minutes and, currently, stands at 995,844 words. The million-word mark is expected to be passed on 29 April, 2009. One of the latest words added is 'e-Vampire': 'a noun describing electric equipment that consumes energy while in standby mode'.

English is spoken as a first, second or auxiliary language. This has resulted in an unprecedented amount of sources for new words to be developed.

Paul Payack, founding president of the Global Language Monitor, an association of academics, wordsmiths and bibliophiles who analyse trends in word usage and choices and their impact on culture, is quoted: "English is different to most other languages in that it absorbs words like no other language in history. Language boils up from the people and we see this by the assimilation of words from 'hip hop', 'Hollywood' and 'Bollywood' ..."

But an average person's vocabulary is 14,000 words. That much?

Meanwhile another story in the BBC says that 'credit crunch' has been recognised as a new word by the Concise Oxford English Ditionary, which records 240,000 words and phrases. Here are some meanings:

credit crunch -- a severe shortage of money or credit
sub-prime -- home loan to those with a poor credit history
boiler room -- an office that is home to high-pressure telephone sales
sleb -- the informal word for a celebrity
leetspeak -- the use of numerals or characters to represent words

There are many more new words. Follow the links.

The Scotsman

BBC