Words

Depending on the source, estimates of the number of words in the English language – excluding scientific terms – range from 450,000 to 750,000. That's admittedly a sizeable delta, so let's split the difference and call it 600,000. Approximately 600,000 words in the English language.

I find that figure a bit tough to put into persepctive, so I went out looking for some comparisons. The Global Language Monitor (www.languagemonitor.com) provides a few that I found interesting. There are approximately:

- 7,300 human languages and dialects;

- 50,000 ideograms in the various Chinese dialects ;

- 100,000 words in the French language; and finally

- 24,000 differing words to be found in the complete works of Shakespeare.

There you have it. With this bit of perspective, let's return to the 600,000 words in the English langauge.

Of those 600,000 words, approximately 200,000 are in common use. The rest, presumably words like "methinks" and "verily", have for one reason or another, fallen out of favor. A relatively educated person has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words. On average, that same relatively educated person uses about 2,000 different words in any given week.

Here's what bothers me. Assuming that I am “relatively educated”, my vocabulary consists of roughly 3% of all English words. Three, count 'em, three little percent. More perspective.

- 3% of women who are on the pill get pregnant anyway

- Permanent rectal injuries occur in about 3% of prostate surgeries

- 3% of the people in the US are vegetarians

- 3% of the Senators in the US Senate are not white

- 3% of all people in the US are naturally red headed

My point? 3% is not a figure you associate with things that are common, usual, positive. You're pretty much statistically at zero. So I'm statisitcally braindead when it comes to language. Not a pleasing thought.

There is an argument that I shouldn’t feel too bad – of the 33% of all words that are in common use, I have in my verbal quiver roughly 10%. Even acknowledging that, I still only use 1% of the common use words in an average week. On any sort of scale, even the scale that gave me a “C” on a college chemistry test for getting 30% of the answers correct, that sucks.

Notwithstanding my apparent failure to harness their full power effectively, I like words. Chances are, if you are still reading this page, you do to. But ask yourself why you like words. To me, words are interesting for various reasons. Some words are nice just because of the way they sound when you say them. Grimalkin. Farrago. Halcyon. Vivisect. Nice sounding words – they feel good coming out your mouth and into your ear. Other words are interesting to us because their meanings are especially pertinent to our lives, our vocations or our avocations. I am a lawyer by trade, so I like the word punctilio. This word literally means "the careful observance of forms" and you never hear it. I like it simply because of a famous quote by a famous judge in a famous case I read in law school. (Note for those interested: Benjamin Cardozo, Meinhard v. Salmon - "joint adventurers, like copartners, owe to one another, while the enterprise continues, the duty of the finest loyalty. . . . Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior. ")

Still other words may be nearly functionally useless, but have interesting origins. Ab ovo means "from the beginning", and refers to the latin phrase "ab ovo usque ad mala", which literally means "from the eggs to the apples", and in turn refers to the Roman tradition of beginning a meal with eggs and ending it with apples. Will I use this word in everyday conversation? Doubtful. Yet I find it interesting. Another of my favorites, canicular, means "of or relating to the dog days of summer", as in "it's hopeless for me to try to ignore canicular cravings for cold beer". Not a particularly interesting word until you understand that the Latin word "canicula," meaning "small dog," is the diminutive form of "canis," the word that ultimately gives us the English word "canine." "Canicula" was also the name for Sirius, the star that represents the hound of the hunter Orion in the constellation named for that Roman mythological figure. Because the first visible rising of Sirius occurs during the summer, the hot sultry days that occur from early July to early September came to be called "dies caniculares," or as we know them in English, "the dog days."

The point of all of this is simple. Because I like words and feel that the average vocabulary is woefully inadequate, I will be posting here from time to time words that I feel are worthy of being more frequently injected into everyday conversations. Sentences like this should result:

"As I battled my usual post-supper borborygmus, my good friend Chester, a hale embonpoint, arrived, inexplicably dressed cap-a-pie in hiking gear, for some crepuscular causerie, and bolted tantivy for the door when he was no longer besot with my bellicose blovations and magniloquent cockalorum."

More to come.