The women's vocabulary hoax

[Amy L Sheldon]

Counting slang and jargon?

I recently heard that an adult speaker has about 60,000 "words", but I
don't think a source for this claim was given.  One would have to know the
total.

Vocabulary size must vary by factors like education, literacy,
employment, skills, etc., perhaps even multilingualism.

Amy

On Wed, 9 May 2001, gabriella Modan wrote:

> Today a student asked me if it was true that "women have 4000 more words
> than men".  Has anyone ever heard of this myth or seen it discussed in any
> scholarly or popular literature?
>
> Galey Modan
>