1256: Does It Matter How Many Words You Know? May 18, 2018

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Shakespeare is often lauded for his immense vocabulary in his literature, but does this matter? In a previous post from Word Facts, it was discussed how many rappers would have equivalent or even larger lexicons than Shakespeare [1], even if they aren't thought of that was necessarily, but an important followup-question to that is: so what?. Reportedly, an average issue of The Sun—which for the sake of this post will be assumed to be considered lowbrow—contains roughly 6000 words per issue (this does not include repeated words). For reference, the both immensely longer and more academically renowned The King James Bible contains roughly 8000, though it is regarded as incredibly well-crafted and prestigious. People make this same point about US Presidents, stating how Wilson used around 1000 words in his addresses whereas those of George W. Bush could have around a mere 250, but as is hopefully clear from the first example, the number of distinct words really has no correlation with intellect, and there are also many more factors to eloquence.
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