Vocabulary

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Vocabulary refers to the choice of words available 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.