Organized Disorder

"How big is the English language?" Bill Bryson asks.
No one knows. Even if someone devoted years and years to the study of how many words exist, they could not find the answer because new words are created every single day. Maybe for one moment, one brief moment, someone could know, but soon after a word or group of words would evolve into something else.

Of course people have attempted to estimate the number of words that subsist and to define each of them. Over the years, dictionaries and their authors have searched and researched every word possible. In the very first paragraph of "Order Out of Chaos" by Bill Bryson, he lists the different numbers of words in four different dictionaries. They all differ greatly in count. Are words like "whoa" and "cutie" actually defined as words? I mean, they are a part of many people's vocabulary, but are they correct depictions of words according to Webster or Random House?

There are also words that people know exist and do exist in the dictionary but people never use. Bryson makes an example of the words "inflationist", "forbiddance", "moosewood", and "pulsative". I agree with this because, yes, I know these words exist but I don't think I have ever used them and I probably will not anytime soon.

We have taken this chaotic pile of letters, sounds, and syllables and created some sort of organized system out of it. Does every single person have the same system? No, I don't think so. That doesn't mean many people won't have similar systems but no ones will be identical. Everyone has their own twist on dialect and jargon, but that is what makes someone individual and different. That is what keeps us from becoming robots and being exactly the same as everyone else.