English is closing in on its millionth word

Metcalf, of the dialect society, believes that if all the English words that ever existed were tallied, the count would be far more than a million. But however many words English-speakers have at their disposal, it's clear that most new coinages are as perishable as any other fad. Remember Y2K?

And in 2006, the dialect society selected "to be plutoed" as its word of the year, meaning to be demoted, as happened when Pluto lost its designation as a planet. It didn't catch on. But the 2004 choice of "red state," "blue state" and "purple state," to indicate a Republican, Democratic or undecided state, has proven more durable.

"The most interesting factor to me is unobtrusiveness," said Metcalf, who has studied the reasons for the longevity of certain words or phrases. "People are always coming up with clever, cute coinages, and we laugh at them, but we don't use them. A really unobtrusive word is like a stealth word. It just seems natural."

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A glossary

Confused by some words in this story? Here are definitions:

Billary: Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Godzone: a humorous name for New Zealand, taken from the first two words of a popular description of the island nation as God's own country.

blankie: a common American colloquialism for blanket that was added in December to the Oxford English Dictionary.
locavore: someone who eats food grown or produced locally.