What is vocabulary?

The vocabulary of a person is defined either as the set of all words that are understood by that person or the set of all words likely to be used by that person when constructing new sentences. Even though the two words are synonymous, "curse" is a regular part of the vocabulary of most native English speakers while "imprecate" is not.

The richness of a person's vocabulary is popularly thought to be a reflection of either intelligence or level of education. Accordingly, many standardised tests, such as the SAT, have questions that test vocabulary.

English Vocabulary

It is widely circulated that the English language has the largest vocabulary of any language, but this claim is difficult to formulate precisely, and essentially impossible to prove.^[1]

The Oxford English Dictionary lists a total of 171,476 words with an additional 47,156 obsolete and 9,500 derivative words as subentries, giving almost a quarter of a million words in the English language, even when technical terms, place names and multiple word senses are excluded.^[2] Clearly, therefore, any individual's vocabulary must necessarily consist of only a small subset of the total possible vocabulary of the language. One estimate, by David Crystal, is that the average college graduate has an active vocabulary of 60,000 words and an additional passive vocabulary of 75,000 words.^[3]

Increasing the size of one's vocabulary, also called vocabulary building, is an important part of both learning a language and improving one's skills in a language in which one is already proficient.

Vocabulary Acquisition and games

There are many ways to improve vocabulary, one however seems to stand above the rest, it is called Motor Imaging.(Casale, 1985, Casale & Manzo, 1983) See also reading skills acquisition. Many adults find vocabulary building to be a fun and educational activity, as evidenced by the popularity of "word-a-day" services. This is also reflected in the popularity of the charity website FreeRice, which employs a donation model based upon a vocabulary-building word game.