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The Million Word March (Or Maybe April)
by Mad Dog
A million words is way more than any dictionary includes. Most standard dictionaries define about 200,000 words. The Oxford English Dictionary (motto: "More words than you can shake a cudgel at") has about 600,000. By the end of April, the English language will be one million words strong. At least it will be if you believe the Global Language Monitor, an organization that uses live people combined with computer algorithms and chicken entrails tossed into a fairy circle during the full moon to track trends in language around the world.
According to them, English picks up a new word every 98 minutes, which is about 15 a day, 105 a week, or just enough to make my spellchecker feel really dumb, and if there's anything worse than a spellchecker with low self-esteem it's a user who thinks anthropomorphism in computer programs is okay to talk about in public. They don't say anything about words being kicked out, so we can assume English is the packrat of languages and it only gets bigger, with towering piles of old words stacked everywhere. I never realized how much English was like my grandfather.
A million words is a lot, even though it's only about 1/750,000th the number of dollars the government handed out in an effort to make sure George Bush doesn't wind up being known as the Herbert Hoover of the New Millennium. On the other hand, when you consider that the new TV show, Million Dollar Password, is giving away—go ahead, guess!—yes, a million dollars, maybe it's not such a big number after all. But to paraphrase Everett Dirksen, "A million words here, a million words there, pretty soon you're talking about not being able to finish a crossword puzzle."
What could we possibly do with 980,000 more words? Where would we put them all? As it is I'm afraid that if I stuff one more thing into the right side of my head my social security number's going to fall out my left ear. A million words is way more than any dictionary includes. Most standard dictionaries define about 200,000 words. The Oxford English Dictionary (motto: "More words than you can shake a cudgel at") has about 600,000, and it takes 22,000 pages in 20 volumes and two hernias to list them all. That means either the Global Language Monitor has heard words the OED people haven't, they lost count after "obfuscation" and don't want to admit it, or they make up words knowing no one's going to go through a vocabulary list of a million words.
While that sounds like a lot of words, stop and consider that there are 1.35 billion people on Earth who speak English. That means there's only one word for every 1,350 speakers. I don't know about you, but I'd hate to find out I was one of those people who didn't have their own word, though should that happen I'd make one up just so I could feel important. Maybe a word like grobbish. Or pongroid. If I could convince the Global Language Monitor to recognize these then I've just managed to push the Million Word Day a little bit closer. Heck, with some thought and mittens on my hands when I type I could probably manage to single-handedly move the date up to next Tuesday.
The question is, do we really need a million words? The average American knows about 20,000 words but only uses 7,500 of them in a given day. This means that on most days we have a storehouse of 12,500 unused words gathering dust in the crannies of our cerebellum. Or should I say, the recesses of our mind. That being the case, what could we possibly do with 980,000 more of them? Where would we put them all? As it is I'm afraid that if I stuff one more thing into the right side of my head my social security number's going to fall out my left ear. Heck, even Shakespeare knew only about 60,000 words, and half the time we don't have a clue what he's saying without listening to a podcast of the CliffsNotes. If he'd known a million words even Cliff wouldn't be able to figure out what he was saying.
While they're predicting the date, they're not predicting what the millionth word will be. It's a safe bet it will be something we've never heard before. And very likely something we won't hear again in six months. I'm not sure what most of the new words that are popping up every 98 minutes are, but I'm sure they're things like repurpose, ginormous, hella—and its grade school equivalent, hecka—and Obamalovefest, which may or may not last depending on whether bankruptcy becomes the leveraged buyout of the decade. Either way I'd better stop on the way home tonight and pick up some flash cards if I'm going to have any hope of keeping up. Or ever winning at Scrabble again. But keep in mind that just because a word enters the language it doesn't mean it's going to last. I mean, they can't all be grody, Y2K, and Macarenas, you know.
The Global Language Monitor estimates that the millionth word will show up around April 29th, but they say it could be as soon as March 30th, which makes it very difficult to invite people to a Million Word Party. And while they're predicting the date, they're not predicting what the millionth word will be. It's a safe bet it will be something we've never heard before. And very likely something we won't hear again in six months. But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy it in the meantime. You know, while we're waiting for another ginormous number of hella repurposed words to join the language.
©2009 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Read them, they don't use very many words.
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