Morning journal and courier., 1888-05-16
 THE WORDS WE USE.
Does an Average Man Cse Seven Hun
 dred Words or Seven Thousand2

Does an Average Man Ese Seven Hun.
 dred Words or Seven Thousand2
 From Literature.l
 At an educational meeting held in this State few years ago the conductor, 8 noted professor, made the following statement: 'tThe best educated person in this room will not use more than six or seven hundred words" He also assigned a smaller number to persons of limited education, stating that an ignorant man would not use more than two or three hundred words. I had before seen statements of similar import in public print, and to test their correctness began an investigation of the matter.
 The subject was brought anew to my mind by observing an article in the Chautauquan some months ago, in which Professor Ban- croft remarked: ''It has been estimated that an English farm hand has vocabulary limited to three hundred words. An Amer ican workingman who reads the newspapers may command from seven hundred to one thousand words. Five thousand is a large number, oven for an educated reader or speaker" This assertion is much nearer the truth than that of the institute conductor mentioned. For the benefit of those who may be interested l offer the results of my study on the subject. An intelligent person can make tho same examination and will ar rive at substantially the same results.
 I took Webster's high school dictionary, edition of 1878, containing four hundred and thirty-four pages of vocabulary, and exam ined each word in the book. made note of those words which I supposed I had used at some time either in speaking or writing. counted the primitive words and those de- rivatives whose meaning is most at variance with the primitive. Thus count fright and fruit, but not frighten, frightful, frightfully, nor fruitage, fruiterer, fruitful, fruitfulness, fruition and fruit tree. I omitted most of the compound words, especially when the component parts directly indicated the mean ing, as milk-pail, meeting house, rag man, but counted those whose significance was not directly indicated, as crowbar, quicksand tinfoi1. As the result of this examination I had 1928 words which think myself have used.
 There were 40 in A, 528 in B, 766 in O.. H, 130 in I, S1 in J, 49 in K, 290 in L, 476 in M, IA in N, 217 in o, 715 in P, 55 in Q, s97 in R, 954 in s, 454 in T, 47 in U. 14S in V. 202 in W, 23 in x and and 10 in g.
 Had counted the various derivatives in common use it is probable the number would be nearly double.
 To make 8 further test of words at my command, I spent about two hours in wri- ting from memory words in A. I was able to note dewn five hundred and thirty-seyen words that I could use if occasion required. This is thirty-fve per cent. more than had counted from the dictionary. Should the same proportion hold good in all the letters it would follow that I can recall from memory ten thousand seven hundred words, all of which are familiar.
 I made another count and came to the con- clusion that could give a fair definition of at least twenty five thousand words in that book, and would understand their signifca- tion in printed article or spoken address.
 The above estimates are based upon my own experience and knowledge because it was convenient to make the experiment with myself. Every well-informed man will be as competent if not more so. Either pro- lessor mentioned will have more extended vocabulary than have
 I then took at random, in the same die. tionary, page in each letter and counted the words in very common uss On twenty four pages there were two hundred and fifty four such words. This would give thirty three hundred words in use by persons of the most ordinary intelligence. None of these lists include any proper names.
 At the time of making this study one of my children was three years and two months of age. noted down (and still have the 1ist) two hundred and thirteen words used by her in one day. They were words that any