Vocabulary

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This article/section is a stub — probably a pile of half-sorted notes and is probably a first version, is not well-checked, so may have incorrect bits. (Feel free to ignore, or tell me)

Vocabulary refers to the total set of words in a language, or to a speaker's grasp of it.


Vocabulary often refers to words rather than concepts. Usually a good set of words are complex synonyms for simpler ones, or are words for very specific and not regularly required concepts, say, defenestration.

Almost all speakers have a rather limited vocabulary compared to the total language's existing words - but five to ten thousand words tend to cover (on the order of) 90% of practical use, when (apparently(verify)) going by token count of every-day usage corpora.


See also compounds, as they can hugely expand a language's vocabulary (and make its size ill defined) and complexifies automated interpretation of unseen words. Inflection and derivation have similar effect.