Friday, January 18, 2013

The English Langauge


The English language has more than 800,000 different words.  Most people know at the most barely 100,000 words.  That means most people who speak, write, and read English are only aware of and using one eighth of the words that make up this amazing language.

I have an Internet site I have signed up with that sends me a different English word every day.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/definition

Please check it out.  This sight gives you the definition of the word.  Examples of how it has actually been used in writing and the origins of the word.  Each day I get a new word with the definition and examples of how it is used.

I actually copy and paste them into a word document and then run the spell check feature and add the words that Microsoft Word does not recognize, which is quite a few of them.  So slowly but surely as my knowledge increases so does the vocabulary of my word processor.

What word has the most definitions?
"Set" has 464 definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary.
"Run" comes in a distant second, with 396 definitions.
Rounding out the top ten are;
"go" with 368 definitions.
"take" with 343 definitions.
"stand" with 334 definitions.
"get" with 289 definitions.
"turn" with 288 definitions.
"put" with 268 definitions.
"fall" with 264 definitions.
"strike" with 250 definitions.

1 comments:

Katharina said...

Great post! I think I will sign up for that website as well. It can't hurt to build my vocabulary, especially since I am not a native speaker. :)

 
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