(CBS) And in the background, his algorithm, called the Predictive Quantities Indicator, ticks away counting words and adjusting to tips from more than 100 "language police" — Payack's fond name for his tipsters around the globe. As of Jan. 16, 2006, at 1:16 p.m., the number of English words, according to the P.Q.I., was 985,955.

Payack says the Global Language Monitor Web site now gets 30 million page views per month — and with sections of lists and word analysis titled "Bushisms" and "Hollywords," the site's popularity is not surprising.

But Payack's claim to being able to pinpoint, in the near future, when the one-millionth word in the English language is born has gotten more hype that any other of his Global Language Monitor's recent claims. Is it worth attention?

That depends what you think of as a word. Payack says he favors a broad definition, allowing global English to take up and blend with other languages. His count includes words in "Chinglish," "Spanglish" and those bred from hip hop culture. Even a text-messaged "LOL" or ":)" counts as a word.

"The whole thing is that it is not an exact science. His theory is as valid as any other," said Daniel Ward, editor of Language Magazine. "Language develops so very quickly. Some people say there are 2 million words in the English language, some say there are a half million."

Sheidlower is among the former camp. The OED, which he edits, contains 600,000 defined words and phrases. But "there are millions upon millions of chemical terms that could be regarded as words, which I'm guessing he doesn't, because then there would be millions (of words in his count)."

Wilton concurs: "I'd say there are half-a-million named species of beetle alone."

Payack knows he's got skeptics, but he identifies the real enemies of his research as "postmodernists and deconstructionists" who tend to deny that any definition of a word is suitable. Payack's definition: "anything that can be understood. If millions of people are saying 'bling bling,' we'll accept that."

And they do accept "bling bling" — along with "a'ight" (all right, urban U.S. origins), "fundoo," (Hindi for cool in India) and even all the components of "lol ill ttyl gf ;)."

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