Selective Tendencies, etc.
but not so rapidly as one might suppose. So far as the English vocabulary is concerned, its actual increase since the days of Johnson’s Dictionary is owing in large part to an addition of words hitherto unrecorded. The apparent numerical gain, which is so astonishing, is made up considerably of compounds, of words of variant spellings, of scientific nomenclature derived from many languages, but mostly from the Latin. If we omit these it probably will be found that an English dictionary of 100,000 words would be tolerably complete.
In the work of compiling an English dictionary, there are many nice differences to settle between function and form of distinct word-units. There is a surprising number of word-variations that are easily transformed into different words. The facility of compounding words is a temptation to the lexicographer not easily resisted, and which, when yielded to, encumbers the vocabulary. However cautiously he notes the uses of the
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