diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index 79ba4d0ede..70d1d7d68c 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -207,6 +207,9 @@ Release 2.5.0 - UNRELEASED
 
     MAPREDUCE-5899. Support incremental data copy in DistCp. (jing9)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-5886. Allow wordcount example job to accept multiple input paths.
+    (cnauroth)
+
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
   BUG FIXES 
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-examples/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/examples/WordCount.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-examples/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/examples/WordCount.java
index 48c02fe1e1..8634130767 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-examples/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/examples/WordCount.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-examples/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/examples/WordCount.java
@@ -68,8 +68,8 @@ public class WordCount {
   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
     Configuration conf = new Configuration();
     String[] otherArgs = new GenericOptionsParser(conf, args).getRemainingArgs();
-    if (otherArgs.length != 2) {
-      System.err.println("Usage: wordcount <in> <out>");
+    if (otherArgs.length < 2) {
+      System.err.println("Usage: wordcount <in> [<in>...] <out>");
       System.exit(2);
     }
     Job job = new Job(conf, "word count");
@@ -79,8 +79,11 @@ public class WordCount {
     job.setReducerClass(IntSumReducer.class);
     job.setOutputKeyClass(Text.class);
     job.setOutputValueClass(IntWritable.class);
-    FileInputFormat.addInputPath(job, new Path(otherArgs[0]));
-    FileOutputFormat.setOutputPath(job, new Path(otherArgs[1]));
+    for (int i = 0; i < otherArgs.length - 1; ++i) {
+      FileInputFormat.addInputPath(job, new Path(otherArgs[i]));
+    }
+    FileOutputFormat.setOutputPath(job,
+      new Path(otherArgs[otherArgs.length - 1]));
     System.exit(job.waitForCompletion(true) ? 0 : 1);
   }
 }