There are around a half-million words in the full Oxford English
Dictionary, though most people use only a few thousand in everyday
communication. Randall Munroe of xkcd explains the Saturn V rocket using
only the 1,000 most commonly-used English words. This comic grew out of
Munroe's journeys into Simple English Wikipedia. You can see another example here. If you want a taste of how difficult it is to explain things using only the thousand most common words, The Up Goer Five Text Editor
will point out any words you use that are too uncommon. However, if you
are going to explain something to children or people who are learning
English as a second language, the simpler the better. What you see here is just a small portion of the rocket: see the entire panel at xkcd. (via Metafilter)
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