IntroductionThe term vocabulary may be defined as all the words that make up a language. Words are the basic units of speech and writing, and a wide vocabulary is generally respected as a sign of learning and intelligence. The choice of the right word can be of crucial importance in a person's daily dealings, whether it be in winning an argument, impressing a potential employer, pleasing or flattering another person, or conveying respect or seriousness of purpose.It is estimated that there are some 1 billion speakers of English around the world (including those who speak English as a second language). The number of words a person may include in his or her personal vocabulary depends on a variety of factors, not least his or her age and education. Estimates of the size of the average English speaker's vocabulary range from 10,000 to 12,000 words for a 16-year-old to anything between 20,000 and 60,000 for a college graduate. It has been calculated that William Shakespeare drew on a vocabulary of between 18,000 and 25,000 words in his various writings.Inevitably, every speaker or reader of English encounters hitherto unfamiliar words on a regular basis. Most people add new words to their vocabulary more or less unconsciously in the course of their everyday experience through imitation of what they hear others say, either face to face or via broadcast media, or from what they read in books, newspapers, and other written documents. It is, however, possible to widen your vocabulary in a more deliberate manner through the use of dictionaries, thesauruses, and other word books. Some people doggedly read a page or two of a dictionary every day in order to increase their vocabulary. Many more find that when they look up a word in a dictionary they are easily beguiled into reading neighboring entries that were formerly unfamiliar to them, or they find themselves browsing at random.It may be useful to note that there is a difference between a person's passive vocabulary (the words he or she understands) and a person's active vocabulary (the words he or she actually uses). Every speaker or writer of English exercises personal discretion in deciding which words are suitable for use in formal contexts and which are acceptable only in informal surroundings. Making mistakes in this regard risks social embarrassment or, in the case of applying for a job or attracting a sponsor for instance, material disadvantage. However wide a person's active and passive vocabularies may be, there are always a number of words about which the person concerned is uncertain, whether it be with regard to their meaning, spelling, or usage. Removing this uncertainty by checking a word in a dictionary or other source enables a person to use that word with more confidence and in the right context (though, in view of the size of the English vocabulary, its place in an individual's lexicon of unfamiliar words is very likely to be quickly taken by another new word).Each individual's personal vocabulary develops as he or she goes through life according to the influences of fashion, slang, the jargon of new technologies, and regional usages, to name but a few factors. Understanding new words is often important. Leaving aside the option of consulting a dictionary or other written authority, sometimes their meaning can be guessed at by their context or through knowledge of similar related words. Some appreciation of how words are formed can also help in unraveling meaning.Understanding English VocabularyIt is a common complaint among people learning to write and speak English that many words apparently fail to follow the same set of rules. Thousands of commonly used words behave in an irregular manner, taking unexpected and seeming unpredictable forms in the plural or in the past tense, for example. Words that sound the same may be spelled differently and be totally unconnected in meaning. Others may look completely different but actually mean exactly the same thing. The more one examines the vocabulary of English, the more it seems to disobey the rules.In order to unravel these complexities, it is very helpful to have a broad understanding of how the language has acquired its volatile modern vocabulary, which is both its greatest glory and its deepest mystery. A brief overview of the historical development of the English vocabulary may help in appreciating and understanding the sometimes illogical ways in which different words behave, apparently in response to contradictory sets of rules.Much of the answer lies in the fact that the vocabulary has been drawn not from one but from many different sources. Roughly half of the existing vocabulary of English was derived originally from Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) sources spoken in Britain from the fifth century A.D. to the Norman Conquest (1066), while the other half has been absorbed from French and other Romance languages or from other, more exotic borrowings from more far-flung parts of the world.During the Old English period (c. 450–c. 1100) there were four main dialects of English: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, and West Saxon. West Saxon gradually emerged as the dominant form, especially as regards writing, and many important Latin texts were translated into English using this particular form. From these Anglo-Saxon dialects came many ordinary vocabulary words in everyday use today, typically characterized by brevity, directness, and simplicity (and, dead, house, is, sun), and reflecting the influence of the island's Norse-speaking invaders in the fifth century (dirt, squeak). Many of these words were derived ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European language spoken in western Asia around 5000 B.C. This language was the origin of numerous other languages spoken in Europe and Asia, hence the obvious similarities between words across many languages spoken around the world.The Middle English period (c. 1100–c. 1500) saw English divided into five main dialects, namely Northern (developing from Northumbrian), West Midlands and East Midlands (developing from Mercian), South Western (developing from West Saxon), and South Eastern (developing from Kentish). The vocabulary was further broadened through the introduction of French as the language of England's Norman invaders. As the language of the ruling class in England, French was considered more refined and sophisticated than the native English tongue and together with Latin became the formal and more complex language of high society and academia until English became the standard written form in the 15th century. Many of the multisyllabic words in common use today are of French, Latin, or Greek origin, although this fact does not necessarily mean that their simpler English equivalent was abandoned (hence the great richness of the modern English vocabulary, which frequently offers a number of choices for the same word). Sometimes the directness and clarity of an Anglo-Saxon version of a word is considered preferable to its more abstract French- or Latin-derived form (for example, kill instead of eliminate or eradicate); sometimes the latter may be preferred exactly because it is less direct or provocative or because it sounds more impressive.Modern English describes the form of the language as used since around the year 1500. This period has witnessed the borrowing of many more words from other parts of the world as English-speaking peoples have come into contact with other cultures through exploration, colonization, and commerce. Source languages have ranged from Albanian and Afrikaans to Scandinavian and Welsh. The vocabulary of modern English has been further extended through the adoption of thousands more Greek and Latin words, especially in the fields of science and academic study.The process of change in the vocabulary is unceasing. The coining of new terms and the emergence of new meanings or usage are constant. Recent influences upon the vocabulary's development have included an explosion in technical terminology and jargon since the middle of the 20th century, necessitated by the commercialization of technology and the advent of the computer age.Word FormationA greater understanding of how words operate can be gleaned through knowledge of the various processes by which they are formed and of the various classes into which they can be categorized beyond their basic grammatical identity as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on.The study of the origin and development of words is called etymology. The best source of information about the etymology of a particular word is a good dictionary, although it is also possible to consult books dedicated to the study of word origins. The larger dictionaries often provide additional etymological information about individual words, suggesting which language a word might have come from as well as, perhaps, its original form and an indication of when it first appeared in the English language. Thus, to take one example, consulting a good dictionary about a word such as soldier will reveal the etymological information that it entered the English language in the 13th century, being derived from the Old French soude (meaning "army pay"), which itself came from the Late Latin solidus (meaning "gold coin" and originally "firm").Because the English language as we know it is the product of a thousand years or more of continual (and continuing) development, many words have changed their spelling or meaning one or more times over the centuries. This factor may be of some significance if a reader is reading (or writing) a book or document of a historical character, whether it be a play by William Shakespeare or a legal paper dating back 100 years. Words that have famously, and sometimes unpredictably, changed their meaning include nice (formerly meaning dainty or delicate but now more generally indicating anything satisfactory in nature) and gay (formerly meaning jolly or bright but now relating almost exclusively to homosexuality).Relatively few words in English are the product of pure invention, and most have evolved from or are related to other words. A large proportion of words in English are blends resulting from the combination of two or more existing words. Another substantial class of words owes its existence to the addition or removal of various affixes to existing words, which again may provide a clue as to meaning (thus aqua- signifies something to do with water, while psycho- indicates a connection with psychology). A relatively small number of words called eponyms began life as surnames, in which case the life of the person concerned may give an idea of the field to which a particular term is relevant: for instance, newton (after British physicist Isaac Newton) and sousaphone (after U.S. composer John Philip Sousa).Of those words that have sprung up apparently independently of other existing words, there is usually no alternative but to have their meaning explained directly, either by another person or through consulting a dictionary or other written source. Many such words begin as taboo slang usages or obscure technical jargon before winning general acceptance into mainstream vocabulary. A great many more initially unfathomable words comprise borrowings from other languages, among them Latin, Greek, Arabic, Persian, French, and German, as well as more exotic sources such as Chinese, Hindi, and Kiswahili.Portmanteau WordsSome words are formed through the combination of two or more smaller words, resulting in a so-called portmanteau word (or blend) that incorporates the meanings of the original two words. Typically the new word is formed by taking the first part of one word and attaching it to the last part of another word. Widely familiar examples include brunch (from breakfast and lunch), motel (from motor and hotel), docudrama (from documentary and drama), and smog (from smoke and fog). By this process whole groups of words may be built through combining a particular stem (for example, info) with a host of other words (infotainment, infomercial, infopreneurial).Note that portmanteau words are not always the product of two whole words but may be arrived at through the combination of one whole word with part of another word (thus, foodie, dopey, etc.). Most portmanteau words are coined as convenient responses to changing linguistic demands but, however useful, typically meet, on first introduction, with some resistance from those who consider them clumsy and artificial. Nonetheless, countless portmanteau words have entered the language and appear as a matter of course in respected dictionaries.Because of doubts about the authenticity of many portmanteau words, especially when they are newly coined, they are sometimes written with a hyphen between the two parts of the word (as in no-brainer or de-skilled). These hyphens tend to be omitted as the word wins general acceptance.Back FormationBack formation describes a method of forming new words through the reduction of longer words by the removal of an assumed affix (which does not usually in reality exist). The majority of words formed in this manner are verbs derived from nouns or adjectives, although there are also examples of adjectives, adverbs, and nouns created in this way. Another group of words created through back formation consists of singular nouns derived from plural nouns. Most new words formed by back formation attract disapproving attention when first introduced and are likely to be considered grammatically incorrect. They are often dismissed as jargon or slang and widely disliked, but this negativity has not prevented hundreds of examples from being absorbed into mainstream usage, often within very few years. Some caution should be exercised, therefore, in using relatively recently coined back formations, especially in formal contexts.The following table lists some accepted source words and the new words created from them through the process of back formation:| Source Word | Back Formation |
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| automation | automate | | babysitting | babysit | | burglar | burgle | | curiosity | curio | | diagnosis | diagnose | | disgruntled | gruntled | | donation | donate | | dry cleaning | dry-clean | | editor | edit | | enthusiasm | enthuse | | emotion | emote | | extradition | extradite | | groveling | grovel | | house hunting | house-hunt | | lazy | laze | | liaison | liaise | | oration | orate | | pease | pea | | peddler | peddle | | reminiscence | reminisce | | sculptor | sculpt | | self-destruction | self-destruct | | sightseeing | sightsee | | statistics | statistic | | taxicab | taxi | | television | televise | | typewriter | typewrite |
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