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It's Official: 1 Billion Words registered for the English Language

apnews.myway.com — A massive language research database responsible for bringing words such as "podcast" and "celebutante" to the pages of the Oxford dictionaries has officially hit a total of 1 billion words, researchers said Wednesday

Who dugg this? Made popular Apr 28, 2006

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  • osbjmg, on 10/12/2007, -5/+21O RLY?
  • leszek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16all those cromulent words embiggens the time you need to learn them.
  • BloodJunkie, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18Is "digg" in there?
  • wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16Joe has a problem with spamming
  • Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Just so we're clear on this:
    "Oxford University Press lexicographer Catherine Soanes said the database is not a collection of 1 billion different words, but of sentences and other examples of the usage and spelling."
  • quink, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9http://digg.com/links/English_will_have_1,000,000_words_soon_
  • ByteGuerilla, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"Less of something but fewer of somethings. Check your grammar before insulting others!"

    You mean fewer of some things.
  • gahal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Googled is a perfectly cromulent word.
  • osbjmg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9No blogspam and you can play with us, Joe.
  • boycy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+82 or fewer not 2 or less.
    Less of something but fewer of somethings. Check your grammar before insulting others!
  • rm999, on 10/12/2007, -2/+71 billion? They say the average person knows less than 50,000 words. 1 million I could believe, but not a billion.

    As a reference, the Oxford English Dictionary contains 500,000 words (and it contains words that are no longer commonly used).
  • mufazaTheFirst, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The Oxford English _corpus_ contains a billion words. The corpus is a carefully selected set of English texts. So there are not 1 billion unique words, as you might think reading the heading.
    For example, "the" accounts for 50 million of those words.
  • Rickard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding."

    I guess Google banners don't count?
  • bsoric, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8His comments might *not* be buried if only he stopped with the spamming, yet he obviously doesn't realize that.
  • darkenin13, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8that's great 1 billion words in the english language and most of America still only uses words with 2 or less syllables
  • sixister, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well thank god it's official.
  • jonnyeh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5when did 1 mil turn into 1 bil?
  • databyss, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5YA RLY!
  • RickySan65, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://www.cambridge.org/elt/corpus/ this corpus has been around longer then the oxford one, which is used to compile http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org/ again, around longer then oxford, and free (while it lasts) and yes, i had something to do with the design and coding of it all..
  • quasipalm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Or slashdotted or googled?
  • toastgodsupreme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Now if only we could go in and fix it the english language and it's inconsitencies.
  • BloodJunkie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What banners? I only see content and sponsored content.
  • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Please, oh please tell me "mashup" is not in there.
  • ProfessorRiffs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Podcast is definitely not a word, merely an industry term.....lingo, baby. I'm a musician, and I know that "pick-slide" and "blast beat" and "kill switch" are just terms made up by musicians, for musicians.

    Also, I like coffee!!!!! A lot!!!!!!!!!!!
  • boycy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Now I feel silly :(
  • Yuffie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Their comes a point on Digg where people just don't care if it's a dupe. If you see the same article on the front page, Just don't click on it...
  • B0jangles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nah, the OED understand that leetspeak is used by anime geeks who wank over cartoons. For which reason they will decline to pleasure you.
  • rstevens, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Anyone know how to download the list of words?
  • orangemarmalade, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1is 'meecrob' in there?
  • ArmchairAthlete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nobody will know what "podcast" was supposed to mean in a few years anyhow.
  • B0jangles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No, you speak an american dialect of English not some fancy bastardised which you seem to have created.
  • cbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Seriously. It might sound silly but you're right. I don't care if "podcast" doesn't necessarily mean something for an apple iPod, but it sure originated from there and it's still a jargon. I think it's a stupid "word" (uuk, I shouldn't even call it that) that isn't necessary for the dictionary.
  • ByteGuerilla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So do I need to get a sponsored content remover extension for firefox now, in addition to advert blocking?
  • jonnyeh, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Ya, this is total bunk!

    Check it out: http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/
  • GrinningFool, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Blogspam: No
    Spam: Yes.
  • Manchucka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Deceiving, deceive, deceives, deceivable, deceiver, deceivers, deceivingly.

    =7 words? No.
  • ProfessorRiffs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Finally, somebody makes this distinction. Just like the fact (well, it *should* be a fact!) that Mexicans speak Mexican, not Spanish.

    p.s. Before anybody's panties get in a bind, this is not a slam on the Mexicans, my gf is half-Mexi......
  • jo42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How do you submit words be removed from the English language - i.e. because they are brain-dead marketing speak or just retarded.
  • Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2And this is why the English language is terrible... just way too overcomplicated
  • chrizzler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1SPAM=WHY?

    Man. Guess I will stop reading comments on digg articles... its obvious that the length of an argument is correlated with the amount of intelligence around here. Arg.
  • KiwiFireball, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1hmm 1 billion? Sure glad I speak American, not english.
  • metajoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0And how many of the words aren't used anymore?
  • peter303, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Even more words for the President to mispronounce!

    I apologize for this troll, but it was irresistable.
  • Mugros, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Then you should check the design.
    It doesn't look good if the background with the "Real Englisch Guarentee" repeats itself to the right.

    BTW, the askoxford site really sucks. Search doesn't work without JS. And even with JS enabled the links of the search results don't work.
  • gunner1138, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Cool. Now who's going to use them all?!
  • bbrosemer, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Yes more useless garbage that the English language doesn't need.... If podcast is in there, the phrase "Blue Screen of Death" or BOD should be too!!!
  • atomiximota, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Mexicans speak Mexican Spanish, Americans speak American English, Spanish speak Castilian Spanish.
  • atomiximota, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1How many people have to use a word before it becomes an "official" word?
  • zeldafan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Is Truthiness in there?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness
  • diggnationdevon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I bet the president pronounces words better then you do.
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