Answer: Based on my Internet research, a native English-speaker knows 12,000 – 20,000 College/university graduates use upwards of 20,000 - 25,000 Spelling-Bee winners know about 30,000 Shakespeare actively used more than 30,000 words in his written works, and his entire vocabulary has been estimated at approximately 66,000 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd E, V (Oxford University Press, 1989) has 616,500 English words, including scientific words, has been estimated at 1,000,