English, the second most spoken language in the world (Mandarin being the most spoken), has more words than any other language. But English speakers generally use only about 1% of the language. About one third of the more than one million English words are technical terms. Still, every decade new words are added to the English language. Here are some of them -
1940's
ack-ack, apartheid, atom bomb, baby-sit, barf, bazooka, cheeseburger, crash-land, flying saucer, gobbledygook
1950's
aerospace, alphanumeric, brainstorming, car wash, cha-cha, digitize, do-it-yourself, ethnohistory, in-house, meter maid
1960's
area code, ASCII, biohazard, Brownie point, crib death, doofus, disco, glitch, microwave oven, Op-Ed, sexism
1970's
airhead, bean counter, biofeedback, deadbeat dad, diskette, electronic mail, junk food, gentrify, surrogate mother
1980's
AIDS, boom box, caller ID, channel surf, cyberpunk, dis, fragile X syndrome, greenmail, sandwich generation, trophy wife, voice mail, wannabe
1990's
anatomically correct, bad hair day, brux, digerati, granny dumping, medicide, netnanny, olestra, soccer mom, step aerobics, uptalk, World Wide Web