“Noob” could be the one millionth English word

The English language will celebrate its one millionth word in June, with “noob and “defriend” among the candidates.

According to The Global Language Monitor countdown, English will cross the Million Word Mark on June 10th, 2009 at 10:22 am (Stratford-on Avon Time/GMT). We are facing the most fertile period of word generation since William Shakespeare, because of English’s widespread popularity in Asia.

The Global Language Monitor claims that a new term is created every 98 minute, but it doesn’t recognize the term as a word before it has been used 25,000 times by media outlets, on social networks (Twitter anyone?!) or in other sources.

Thanks to Twitter and Facebook terms like “defollow” and “defriend” are bringing us closer to the Million Word Mark. I’ll cross my fingers and hope we won’t see “un-defollow” next year.

Personally I’m surprised that “noob” isn’t officially a word yet. It is so commonly used in MMORPGs and in communities. “Greenwashing” (what companies do to appear environmentally friendly) and “chiconomics” (recession fashion) are also among the candidates.

The average person’s vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words.