Not every language has the same number of words. In fact, English has the largest vocabulary of any language, perhaps because it has been open to assimilating words from other languages. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are more than 200,000 words in the English language, including words that we use daily as well as words that are no longer commonly spoken. Lists of the words in English are arranged in alphabetical order in dictionaries, glossaries, lexicons and other reference works. New editions of these books are published every few years to accommodate the addition of new words as they are invented and assimilated into the language.
Several features of each vocabulary word can be considered. Every word has an etymology, the history of its origin. For example, the word "vocation" comes from the Latin verb, "vocare", which means "to call." English has words from French, Latin, German, Greek, Arabic, and various Native American languages. Each word has a definition, a meaning. Each word has a pronunciation. Each word serves a role in a sentence because it acts as a part of speech; it is either a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, conjunction or article. Each vocabulary word has variants to form plurals or to allow a verb to agree with its subject, for example. Studying vocabulary usually begins with the word's correct pronunciation, spelling and meaning. Etymology and fine nuances that distinguish a word from other words that have similar meaning come later. Because English has many words that can convey very small shades of meaning, one focus of the study of English vocabulary is to help the students to understand the fine differences between similar words. "Hail" and "sleet" are two words that have very similar meanings and the correct distinction between them requires technical information from the discipline of meteorology.
Every trade, profession, and discipline has a particular vocabulary that beginners must master in order to understand the concepts. Each sport has its own vocabulary. Tennis has a court, a serve and a volley while baseball has pitches, bunts and home-runs. Sometimes the same word means very different things in different contexts. A teacher makes accommodations for special needs students to allow them to succeed in the classroom. An optometrist means a very different thing by the word accommodation. In optometry, accommodation is the eyes' ability to change their focus from near to far and back again. When you have a large vocabulary, you are said to have a good "command" of the language.
Sometimes people are judged on the basis of their vocabulary. A command of the English language is often associated with high intelligence. In fact, the College Board recommends that students who are preparing to take the standardized tests that colleges use in the admissions process should concentrate on building their vocabulary. The more people read, the more they are exposed to new vocabulary and the more their vocabulary usually increases.
While the average four year old has a vocabulary of around 5,600 words, college sophomores have vocabularies of around 120,000 words according to the University of Virginia's Cook Counseling Center. Beginning in the earliest grades students study vocabulary, either as its own subject or as the introduction to a new unit of study or book. Usually the incorporation of a new word into a person's vocabulary includes learning to read, pronounce, spell, define and use it correctly in context. Teachers often incorporate games, crossword puzzles and art activities as vocabulary learning strategies. Adults who are involved in self-help efforts to build their vocabularies sometimes set a goal of learning five new words each day.