英语一共有多少个单词？How many words are there in the English language?
(来源：www.
2hzz.
com) 这不是一个数字就可以简单回答的问题，请看下文的分析： There is no singlesensible(明智的)answer to this question.
It's impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it's so hard to decide what actually counts as a word.
Isdogone word, or two (anoun(名词)meaning 'a kind of animal', and averb(动词的)meaning 'to follow persistently')?
If we count it as two, then do we countinflections(语型变化)separately too (e.
g.
dogs= plural noun,dogs= present tense of theverb(动词)).
Isdog-tireda word, or just two other words joined together?
Ishot dogreally two words, since it might also be written ashot-dogor evenhotdog?
It's also difficult to decide what counts as 'English'.
What about medical and scientific terms?
Latin words used in law, French words used in cooking, German words used inacademic(学术的)writing, Japanese words used inmartial(遥事的)arts?
Do you count Scotsdialect(方言)?
Teenage(青少年的)slang(俚语)?
Abbreviations(缩写)?
The Second Edition of the 20-volumeOxford English Dictionarycontains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156obsolete(废弃的、过时的)words.
To this may be added around 9,500derivativewords(派生词) included assubentries(分项).
Over half of these words arenouns(名词), about a quarteradjectives(形容词), and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up ofexclamations(感叹),conjunctions(结合),prepositions(介词),suffixes(后缀), etc.
And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).
This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a milliondistinct(遥的)English words,excluding(排除)inflections(语型变化), and words from technical andregional(地区的)vocabulary not covered by theOED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use.
Ifdistinct(遥的)senses were counted, the total would probablyapproach(接近)three quarters of a million.
Source:Oxforddictionaries