How many words are there in the English language?

英语里一共有多少单词？

There is no single sensible answer to this question. It's impossible to count the number of words in alanguage, because it's so hard to decide what actually counts as a word.

这个问题并没有一个简单而合理的答案。想要计算一种语言里有多少单词是不可能做到的，因为很难定义究竟什么才是一个单词。

For example,Is dog one word,or two(a noun meaning 'a kind of animal', and a verbmeaning 'to follow persistently')?

例如，Dog究竟算一个单词还是两个？dog的名词指一种动物，dog动词指长期跟随。

If we count it astwo,then do we count inflections separately too (e.g. dogs = plural noun, dogs = present tense of theverb).

如果算作两个，那么我们是否也要把它的变型也单独计算（eg：复数名词dogs，第三人称单数现在时dogs）？

Is dog-tired a word,or just two other wordsjoined together?Is hot dog really two words,since it might also be written as hot-dog or evenhotdog?

Dog-tired(筋疲力尽)算一个单词还是两个连在一起的单词?既然Hot dog(热狗)可以被写成hot-dog甚至hotdog，它真的算两个单词吗?

The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words.

长达20卷的《牛津英语词典》第二版中有171476个仍在使用的单词词条，还有47156个废弃单词词条。

To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.

此外还要加上约9500个派生词作为词条下面的分项。

Over half of these words are nouns,about a quarteradjectives,and about a seventh verbs;the rest is made up of exclamations,conjunctions,prepositions, suffixes,etc.

这些单词中，超过半数是名词，约四分之一的单词是形容词，七分之一左右的词是动词，剩下的是感叹词、连词、介词和词缀等。

And these figures don't take account of entries with senses fordifferent word classes (such as noun and adjective).

这一数字并未把单词的不同词性(例如名词和形容词)分别计算。

This suggests that there are,at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words,excluding inflections,and words from technical and regional

vocabulary not covered by the OED,or words not yet added to the published

dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are nolonger in current use.

这表明英语中有至少25万单词，其中20%可能已经不再使用。这25万单词中不包括变型、《牛津英语词典》中不收录的专业术语和地方方言、以及尚未被出版词典收录的单词。

If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters（接近四分之三） of a million.

如果要把同一单词的不同含义分别计算，英语单词的总数可能会接近75万。

想不到英文单词居然有这么多

真不愧“词海”的称呼！

好啦，今天就讲到这里啦~返回搜狐，查看更多