US Cities Where Residents Have the Most Extensive Vocabularies

The average American adult is said to speak a total of between 7,000 and 20,000 words a day, although the typical number of unique words spoken – which may be as few as 1,000 a day – varies from city to city. Compare this to the total amount of words in the English language – about 470,000 words in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary combined – though it’s estimated that only about 170,000 are used frequently, and there are an additional 47,000 words that are obsolete. 

24/7 Tempo reviewed a report by LetterSolver, a site that helps people find commonly used words in word games, to compile a list of U.S. cities where residents have the largest vocabulary. They analyzed millions of geotagged English-language tweets, then selected tweets written in English, reducing the different forms of a word to a single form, and divided all words into samples of 1,000. After that, the number of unique words was obtained and the mean number of unique words for each city was calculated. Only cities with at least 250,000 residents were included for consideration.

According to LetterSolver, a linguistic team attempted to “co-create a new lexicon for a time of climate change, biodiversity collapse, and other transformations in the natural world” based on the San Francisco area’s experience of coastal erosion and rising tides. They coined the words sandulate (“to understand that the coast is alive, and we can’t just build the solid structures that we have”) and mientierra (“a false sense of solid ground beneath us”).

The U.S. cities where residents have the largest vocabulary are represented in 22 states. Many of the cities are in the West and the South. California – the nation’s most populous state, and also among America’s most ethnically diverse – has the most, with seven cities, three of them in the top 10. The city that has the largest vocabulary of all is San Francisco. (Here are some old words we use today but with completely new meanings.)

Here are the U.S. cities where residents have the largest vocabulary

35. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 457.8
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 33.2%
• Median household income: $59,214
• Population: 687,691

34. Nashville, Tennessee

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 458.1
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 46.1%
• Median household income: $64,857
• Population: 678,845

33. Phoenix, Arizona

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 458.6
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 32.8%
• Median household income: $68,435
• Population: 1,624,539

32. Santa Ana, California

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 458.8
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 18.5%
• Median household income: $80,265
• Population: 309,468

31. Plano, Texas

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 459.4
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 59.1%
• Median household income: $95,002
• Population: 287,037

30. Los Angeles, California

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 459.7
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 37.3%
• Median household income: $70,372
• Population: 3,849,306

29. Denver, Colorado

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 459.7
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 55.0%
• Median household income: $81,630
• Population: 711,463

28. Reno, Nevada

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 459.9
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 35.9%
• Median household income: $67,478
• Population: 268,843

27. Colorado Springs, Colorado

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 460.3
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 42.8%
• Median household income: $74,579
• Population: 483,969

26. Indianapolis, Indiana

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 460.7
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 34.7%
• Median household income: $58,479
• Population: 882,327

25. Anchorage, Alaska

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 461.1
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 38.3%
• Median household income: $86,654
• Population: 288,121

24. Chandler, Arizona

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 461.2
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 47.3%
• Median household income: $94,613
• Population: 279,445

23. St. Louis, Missouri

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 461.3
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 38.9%
• Median household income: $49,965
• Population: 293,310

22. Tulsa, Oklahoma

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 462.3
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 35.3%
• Median household income: $51,008
• Population: 411,905

21. San Diego, California

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 462.6
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 48.8%
• Median household income: $93,042
• Population: 1,381,600

20. Oakland, California

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 464.9
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 46.8%
• Median household income: $82,236
• Population: 433,797

19. Tucson, Arizona

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 465.3
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 29.1%
• Median household income: $50,306
• Population: 543,215

18. Honolulu, Hawaii

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 466.0
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 39.9%
• Median household income: $73,434
• Population: 345,532

17. Albuquerque, New Mexico

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 466.0
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 38.5%
• Median household income: $58,512
• Population: 562,591

16. Austin, Texas

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 466.3
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 59.9%
• Median household income: $79,542
• Population: 964,000

15. Lincoln, Nebraska

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 466.5
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 43.0%
• Median household income: $62,294
• Population: 292,648

14. St. Petersburg, Florida

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 466.6
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 40.7%
• Median household income: $64,141
• Population: 258,214

13. Portland, Oregon

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 466.9
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 54.3%
• Median household income: $79,057
• Population: 642,218

12. Madison, Wisconsin

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 467.4
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 58.9%
• Median household income: $67,270
• Population: 269,162

11. Boston, Massachusetts

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 467.9
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 52.5%
• Median household income: $79,283
• Population: 654,281

10. Seattle, Washington

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 469.2
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 46.8%
• Median household income: $101,721
• Population: 4,011,553

9. St. Paul, Minnesota

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 469.4
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 42.0%
• Median household income: $66,098
• Population: 307,176

8. San Jose, California

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 469.8
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 45.8%
• Median household income: $126,377
• Population: 983,530

7. Irvine, California

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 470.9
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 68.3%
• Median household income: $105,774
• Population: 309,014

6. Durham, North Carolina

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 471.1
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 56.9%
• Median household income: $71,343
• Population: 285,439

5. Raleigh, North Carolina

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 472.4
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 53.9%
• Median household income: $74,612
• Population: 469,502

4. Mesa, Arizona

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 472.8
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 32.3%
• Median household income: $69,266
• Population: 509,492

3. Washington, DC

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 474.7
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 63.0%
• Median household income: $90,088
• Population: 670,050

2. New York, New York

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 476.1
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 41.0%
• Median household income: $67,997
• Population: 8,467,513

1. San Francisco, California

• Unique words for every 1,000 spoken: 477.1
• Adults with at least a Bachelor’s degree: 60.9%
• Median household income: $121,826
• Population: 815,201