{"id":91,"date":"2021-05-18T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.org\/blog\/?p=91"},"modified":"2022-08-21T19:31:14","modified_gmt":"2022-08-21T23:31:14","slug":"how-many-words-does-johnson-define","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/how-many-words-does-johnson-define\/","title":{"rendered":"How many words does Johnson define?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The printed first edition (1755) of Johnson\u2019s A Dictionary of the English Language<\/em> is huge! The two large folio volumes weigh about 20 pounds. Just moving them from room to room is a workout. Naturally, people want to know how many words Johnson defines in these volumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201chow many words\u201d question is notoriously difficult, even impossible, to answer, but every dictionary gets asked about it. Here are responses from Merriam-Webster<\/a>, Lexico<\/a>, and Dictionary.com<\/a> to the question How many words are in the English language?<\/em> Dictionary.com concludes that the best answer is \u201cmore words than you\u2019ll ever use.\u201d

The related question How many words does the average person know?<\/em> is also tough, because it requires you to figure out what you mean by know<\/em>. If you see a word you’ve never heard before, but you understand it, does that mean you “know” the word? (e.g., unshoelike<\/em>, as in the sentence, The latest footwear fashions seem almost unshoelike<\/em>). What if you are familiar with the word, and you even remember looking the word up, but you can’t quite define it off the top of your head (e.g., iconoclast<\/a><\/em> or paronymous<\/a><\/em>)? If you’re curious about how your own vocabulary measures up, you can get an estimate of your English vocabulary size here<\/a> and help scientific research as you do it.

You might think that \u201chow many words are in the dictionary\u201d would be an easier question because at least all of the words are written down\u2014but it isn\u2019t! The difficulty lies in defining what a word is. As just one example\u2014should we consider ceiling<\/a><\/em> and cieling<\/em><\/a> to be two different words? (The latter entry says merely \u201cSee ceiling.\u201d) <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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The beginning of Johnson’s 1755 entry for ceiling<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
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Johnson’s 1755 entry for cieling<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For more examples, and an explanation of how we arrived at our answer of \u201cat least 41,684 words,\u201d see our new FAQ<\/a> How many words did Johnson define in his 1755 Dictionary?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many words did Johnson define in his 1755 dictionary? And why is this question so difficult to answer? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dictionary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}