A million words

Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Well that is how many different words there are in the English language.

After all, there are over 1.5 billion people who speak English either as their native tongues, or as a secondary language. Today there 250 million Chinese people learning English.

Don't take my word for it: The Global Language Monitor keeps track. Criteria for a word or a phrase to enter the list is that there are at least 25,000 citations 

"with the necessary breadth of geographic distribution, and depth of citations."

And what is the 1 millionth word? 

Web 2.0.

Here are the ones that almost made it  (taken from the Global Language Monitor website):

999,999: Jai Ho! – The Hindi phrase signifying the joy of victory, used as an exclamation, sometimes rendered as “It is accomplished”. Achieved English-language popularity through the multiple Academy Award Winning film, “Slumdog Millionaire”.
999,998: N00b — From the Gamer Community, a neophyte in playing a particular game; used as a disparaging term.
999,997: Slumdog – a formerly disparaging, now often endearing, comment upon those residing in the slums of India.
999,996: Cloud Computing – The ‘cloud’ has been technical jargon for the Internet for many years. It is now passing into more general usage.
999,995: Carbon Neutral — One of the many phrases relating to the effort to stem Climate Change.
999,994: Slow Food — Food other than the fast-food variety hopefully produced locally (locavores).
999,993: Octomom – The media phenomenon relating to the travails of the mother of the octuplets.
999,992: Greenwashing – Re-branding an old, often inferior, product as environmentally friendly.
999,991: Sexting – Sending email (or text messages) with sexual content.
999,990: Shovel Ready – Projects are ready to begin immediately upon the release of federal stimulus funds.

And the 1,000,000st? 

Financial Tsunami

Funny that. How to start a million.