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🎓 Education
Is my vocabulary big enough?
Estimate your vocabulary size and compare to age norms.
words
Test at testyourvocab.com, then enter your result here
How many words does the average person know?
The average adult English native speaker knows about 20,000–35,000 word families (TestYourVocab.com, 100M+ test results). A "word family" includes all forms of a word — so "run/runs/running/ran" counts as one. Vocabulary grows throughout life, peaking in the 60s.
Average vocabulary size by age (English native speakers)
- 10–14: 10,000–15,000 words
- 15–19: 15,000–20,000 words
- 20–29: 22,000–28,000 words
- 30–39: 25,000–35,000 words
- 40–49: 28,000–38,000 words
- 50+: 30,000–42,000 words
Vocabulary building
Adults learn about 1 new word per day on average, mainly through reading. Avid readers have vocabularies 50%+ larger than non-readers. Non-native English speakers who are proficient typically know 15,000–20,000 word families.