Coupled with the question "how many words are you willing to memorize" I was trying to offer a sense of scale to the absurd. If looking up words in dictionarie

Coupled with the question "how many words are you willing to memorize" I was trying to offer a sense of scale to the absurd. If looking up words in dictionaries is sufficient, how many words should you memorize offline? If everyone agrees learning words is outdated, what will they use to speak? Orwell's newspeak? Most communication, as opposed to art for instance, works both ways. You listen and read, but also speak and write. Dictionaries help you with the first part, but you'll need a little more effort with the second.