<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">There's a new post on <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; "><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">the Web of Language</a></span>:<br><br><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; "><p class="blog"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre; ">A million English words, or only 600,000? Either way, it's a language packed with more words than you'll ever need</span></p><p class="blog">Paul Payack, professional word-counter and the founder of <a href="http://www.yourdictionary.com/" mce_href="http://www.yourdictionary.com/">YourDictionary.com</a>, claims that someone coins an English word every 98 minutes, which seems pretty fast until we consider that during the word-coining frenzy of the 1590s, when the pace of life was slower, about 10,000 new words popped up every year.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Shakespeare and his contemporaries never slept, that comes to a neologism every 68 minutes (<em>neologism, </em>a word, coined in France in the 1730s and borrowed by English in the 1770s, meaning ‘a new word’).<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="blog">Payack’s words-per-minute assertion can’t be tested, but if he’s right, then in the time it took me to write this post, somewhere in the English-speaking world a new word was born, or two, if you count revisions. We know they’re out there.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We just don’t know what they are.</p><p class="blog">Payack also predicts that <a href="http://www.ajc.com/print/content/news/stories/2008/02/25/words0225.html?cxntlid=inform_sr" mce_href="http://www.ajc.com/print/content/news/stories/2008/02/25/words0225.html?cxntlid=inform_sr">some time around April 29, 2009</a> – mark your calendars – the one millionth English word will appear.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not clear how he plans to tell the difference between that word and words 999,999 and 1,000,001.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’re planning to coin the millionth word, don’t quit your day job, because even if your word wins the millionth-word contest, no one’s going to show up at your door with a million-dollar check</p><p class="blog">Anyway, the odometer of English isn’t going to turn to one and six zeroes next year, because most experts think that Payack has seriously overestimated the size of English, partly because he includes such oddities as <em>staycation,</em> ‘vacationing at home because gas is too expensive’ and <em>e-vampire,</em> ‘an electronic device that consumes excessive amounts of energy.’ </p><p class="blog"><em>Staycation</em> and <em>e-vampire</em> are amusing products of the moment, and so far, that’s all they are.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People who don’t know what they mean aren’t bothering to look them up, and it’s likely that these words won’t be around very long, because even if energy costs remain high, people will still need to get away, and they’ll take their gas-guzzling iPhones and laptops with them, leaving <em>staycation</em>behind with the baggage “not wanted on the voyage,” and driving a stake through the heart of <em>e-vampire</em>.</p><p class="blog">Payack’s more conservative competitor, the <em>Oxford English Dictionary,</em> records about 600,000 English words, not as well-rounded as a million, but a sizable sum nonetheless, and while most of the <em>OED’s</em>words are time-tested, it too records plenty of words that you will never need to know, like <em>stayless</em>, ‘ceaseless, ever-changing,’ or <em>staxis,</em> a ‘slight defluxion of any humour, as nasal hæmorrhage,’ apparently the 18<sup>th</sup>-century equivalent of a bloody nose.<span mce_style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found these words while trying to look up<em>staycation</em> in the on-line <em>OED –</em> <em>staycation</em> wasn’t there, despite its recent mention on <a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=173067&title=holistay" mce_href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=173067&title=holistay">the Daily Show,</a></p><p class="blog">if you're eagerly waiting for the millionth English word, imagine what it was like back in 1425 when people coined a new word every 7 hours and spent their time wondering whether they'd make it to 1426, not waiting for the 100,000th word to come along.</p><p class="blog">As always, you can read about it on <a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">the Web of Language</a></p></span><p></p><div><br></div><div><br>DB<br><br>____________________<br>Dennis Baron<br>Professor of English and Linguistics<br>Department of English<br>University of Illinois<br>608 S. Wright St.<br>Urbana, IL 61801<br><br>office: 217-244-0568<br>fax: 217-333-4321<br><br><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron">www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron</a><br><br>read the Web of Language:<br><a href="http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage</a><br><br><br></div></body></html>