3 ms·

Is that different from any other language?

• ghaff 4y ago
  It's hard to say because of things like technical words and slang that isn't in an official dictionary but the Wikipedia article [1] suggests that English is on the high side. (The Wictionary reference for English is a bit higher than the number or words in either MW or OED.) One thing that probably drives word count in English is it has many cases where there are multiple words with similar meanings derived from French/Latin and German-like respectively. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number_of_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dictionaries_by_number...
• DFHippie 4y ago
  It is easier to adopt words into English because English has so few inflections. If it's a noun, you need to be able to add an -s to the end. If it's a verb, you need to add -s, -ed, and -ing. And because the spelling is so random you don't need to make any other changes: just throw it in there. People will probably pronounce it wrong until it becomes widely adopted, like lieutenant, at which point however they're pronouncing it is the correct pronunciation in English (and it may, like lieutenant, have different correct pronunciations in different dialects). I suspect this contributes to the size of the English lexicon.