based in Austin, Tex., has been tracking words for the past five years. Using its own teams of experts and its own algorithm, they say English adds a new word every 98 minutes. This means there are more than 900,000 English words in the world, and the one-millionth will appear sometime in April 2009.In contrast, most standard dictionaries have about 200,000 words, unabridged dictionaries about 600,000.
from Smithsonian: The Million Word March
also The Union-Tribune (April 2, 2006): Amateur's claim of near-seven-figure English lexicon unleashes a torrent of words from the pros
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