wordhoard

plural wordhoards · alternative word-hoard

1. Vocabulary; the totality of words of a language or a person.

   Primary additions to the wordhoard tend to come from commercial sources[.]

   1985, Robert Burchfield, The English Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 44

   4 more examples

   Wordiness is not usually considered a virtue any more than impurity is; but words are the wealth of English, and the riches of its word-hoard are only paralleled by the riches of the Anglo-American nations.

   1930, Janet Rankin Aiken, “English the world over”, in The Bookman, London, page 67

   Emerson came, unlocking his word hoard on nature and friendship and compensation, and irradiating his thoughts'with that peculiar slow smile that was like the emerging of the sun from behind a cloud.

   1940 January 4, The Cairns Post, Qld, page 3, column 3

   Beowulf unlocked his word hoard. “We come, indeed, from across the sea.”

   1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 24

   Still, in spite of the sensation of being caught between a ‘shield-wall’ of opaque references and a ‘word-hoard’ that is old and strange, such readers are also bound to feel a certain ‘shock of the new’.

   1999, Seamus Heaney, “Introduction”, in Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page xii

2. Thesaurus.