# Very important problem
**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878
**Category:** Science, Technology, and Math
**Created:** [July 22, 2026, 7:57pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878 "2026-07-22T19:57:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dualityofmichelle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dualityofmichelle)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2026, 7:57pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/1 "2026-07-22T19:57:27Z")
there are about 1000000 total words in english and the longest sentence ever (that doesn’t go on infinitely) is 13955 words long. so, how many possible sentences are there?
i am not able to calculate this, but could anyone calculate how many possible sentences there are? the restraints being that each sentence must be grammatically correct and cannot be more than 13955 words long. and the sentence can be as short as one word as long as it is grammatically correct…?
though if not that makes sense lol.
thank you.
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### Author:  [@MistressOphelia](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/MistressOphelia)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 8:05am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/2 "2026-07-23T08:05:05Z")
> [@dualityofmichelle](#):
>
> there are about 1000000 total words in english and the longest sentence ever (that doesn’t go on infinitely) is 13955 words long. so, how many possible sentences are there?
Acording to Google’s unavoidable AI: There are approximately \(10^{83,730}\) possible English sentences. This number—a 1 followed by over 83,000 zeros—is calculated by raising your 1,000,000-word vocabulary to the 13,955th power, which represents all possible combinations for a sentence of that maximum length.
How did I get through life without know that? 🤯
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### Author:  [@dualityofmichelle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dualityofmichelle)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 8:20am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/3 "2026-07-23T08:20:34Z")
oh cool. but i wonder how many of those sentences are grammatically correct?
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### Author:  [@MistressOphelia](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/MistressOphelia)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 8:35am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/4 "2026-07-23T08:35:48Z")
Good point. Although AI seems to be quite fastidious with grammar if nothing else. Can an ungrammatical sentence be considered a sentence? It could be argued that it’s just a bunch of words strung together.
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### Author:  [@dualityofmichelle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dualityofmichelle)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 8:41am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/5 "2026-07-23T08:41:11Z")
> [@MistressOphelia](#):
>
> Can an ungrammatical sentence be considered a sentence?
yes. but i’m more curious about grammatically correct sentences. if ai cannot figure it out however, would you like to join me in looking through every single possible sentence and checking whether they are correct or not?
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### Author:  [@MistressOphelia](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/MistressOphelia)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 8:47am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/6 "2026-07-23T08:47:29Z")
No. And I disagree. An ungrammatical ‘sentence’ makes no sense, therefore it’s just a bunch of random words strung together. Grammar is how you construct a sentence. Without it you only have words.
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### Author:  [@dualityofmichelle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dualityofmichelle)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 8:49am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/7 "2026-07-23T08:49:27Z")
its a very lovely day today. that sentence i just wrote is grammatically incorrect, but you still understand what i wrote. so at what point does a sentence become a legible sentence vs just a bunch of words?
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### Author:  [@MistressOphelia](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/MistressOphelia)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 9:08am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/8 "2026-07-23T09:08:13Z")
It’s not grammatically incorrect. It’s missing a capital letter and an apostrophe for some reason. When I see someone writing like that I don’t bother reading it anyway, so it might as well be random words strung together.
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### Author:  [@dualityofmichelle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dualityofmichelle)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 9:15am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/9 "2026-07-23T09:15:31Z")
> [@MistressOphelia](#):
>
> It’s not grammatically incorrect. It’s missing a capital letter and an apostrophe for some reason.
oh yeah… but still you get my point.
> [@MistressOphelia](#):
>
> When I see someone writing like that I don’t bother reading it anyway, so it might as well be random words strung together.
also what a stupid argument lol. “i won’t read it therefore it’s just random words strung together”
though when i search it up, it’s not really clear whether or not a sentence must be grammatically correct to be considered a sentence.
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### Author:  [@MistressOphelia](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/MistressOphelia)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 9:32am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/10 "2026-07-23T09:32:04Z")
I said ‘it might as well be’. How old are you? 12?
What a stupid thread.
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### Author:  [@dualityofmichelle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dualityofmichelle)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 9:38am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/11 "2026-07-23T09:38:01Z")
christ, calm down. it was just a bit of banter my friend. if you no longer want to engage with this thread however, fine. have a lovely day :))
retard.
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### Author:  [@Flannel\_Jesus](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Flannel_Jesus)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 11:37am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/12 "2026-07-23T11:37:33Z")
That doesn’t seem to me to be the right way to calculate possible English sentences. I wouldn’t call any random sequence of words an “English sentence”.
Carrots weasel single time wrote plop yet to rhyme plonk fink don’t arrive so reverb even in on our.
Is that an English sentence?
Edit. Looks like I was beaten to the punch on that point, we all agree. 👍
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### Author:  [@Flannel\_Jesus](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Flannel_Jesus)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 11:40am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/13 "2026-07-23T11:40:16Z")
> [@dualityofmichelle](#):
>
> though when i search it up, it’s not really clear whether or not a sentence must be grammatically correct to be considered a sentence.
When I Google the question, “is a bunch of random words a sentence?”, I get a clear answer of “no”.
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### Author:  [@dualityofmichelle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dualityofmichelle)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 11:45am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/14 "2026-07-23T11:45:11Z")
ok cool so can you calculate it? or will i have to spend the rest of my life looking through all the possible combinations?
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### Author:  [@Flannel\_Jesus](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Flannel_Jesus)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 12:04pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/15 "2026-07-23T12:04:49Z")
It’s constantly changing, new words come into and out of common use all the time. Does it matter that much that you’ll really spend the rest of your life thinking about it? It’s a big number. Who cares if it’s 10^324234 or 10^45438746 ? What difference does it make to you what the specific number is?
I feel like it’s satisfying enough knowing “it’s astronomically large” - more specificity than that doesn’t seem particularly useful here.
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### Author:  [@Flannel\_Jesus](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Flannel_Jesus)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 12:06pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/16 "2026-07-23T12:06:28Z")
I also don’t think there’s necessarily a limit to the number of words in a sentence. You can always write a longer sentence by saying ‘…and…’ or other connecting words.
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### Author:  [@dualityofmichelle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dualityofmichelle)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 12:17pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/17 "2026-07-23T12:17:17Z")
> [@Flannel\_Jesus](#):
>
> Who cares if it’s 10^324234 or 10^45438746 ? What difference does it make to you what the specific number is?
i’m not sure. i suppose just figuring it out would be satisfying lol.
> [@Flannel\_Jesus](#):
>
> I also don’t think there’s necessarily a limit to the number of words in a sentence. You can always write a longer sentence by saying ‘…and…’ or other connecting words.
yes you can, but i needed some sort of limit. so why not just go with the longest sentence ever written?
speaking of which, i fear we may never attempt such a feat again…
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### Author:  [@pseudoai](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/pseudoai)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/18 "2026-07-23T13:56:21Z")
Any sentence you have can always be made longer. In the same way, you can always obtain a larger number if you add 1 to it.
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### Author:  [@Socrates](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Socrates)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2026, 1:15am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/19 "2026-07-24T01:15:23Z")
I’ll get the guys on it.
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### Author:  [@Atla](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Atla)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2026, 3:56am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/very-important-problem/85878/20 "2026-07-24T03:56:54Z")
Why not just make any sentence infinitely long? (in theory, not in practice)
“I sat down, first I counted to two, then I counted to three, then I counted to four, then I counted to …”