Most common words in English

Studies that estimate and ran the most common words in English examine texts written in English. Perhaps the most comprehensive such analysis is one that was conducted against the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), a very large collection of texts from around the world that are written in the English language. A text corpus is a large collection of written works that are organised in a way that makes such analysis easier.

In total, the texts in the Oxford English Corpus contain more than 2 billion words.[1] The OEC includes a wide variety of writing samples, such as literary works, novels, academic journals, newspapers, magazines, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, blogs, chat logs, and emails.[2]

Another English corpus that has been used to study word frequency is the Brown Corpus, which was compiled by researchers at Brown University in the 1960s. The researchers published their analysis of the Brown Corpus in 1967. Their findings were similar, but not identical, to the findings of the OEC analysis.

According to The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists, the first 25 words in the OEC make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and the first 100 words make up about half of all written English.[3] According to a study cited by Robert McCrum in The Story of English, all of the first hundred of the most common words in English are of Anglo-Saxon origin.[4]

Some lists of common words distinguish between word forms, while others rank all forms of a word as a single lexeme (the form of the word as it would appear in a dictionary). For example, the lexeme be (as in to be) comprises all its conjugations (is, was, are, were, etc.), and contractions of those conjugations.[5] Note also that these top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.[1]

100 most common words

Based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus (a large collection of texts in the English language), the 100 words that occur most frequently in written English are:[1]

Word Parts of speech OEC rank BC rank Dolch level Fry's Sight Words
the Article 1 Pre-primer
be Verb 2 Primer
to Preposition 3 Pre-primer
of Preposition 4 Grade 1
and Conjunction 5 Pre-primer
a Article 6 Pre-primer
in Preposition 7 Pre-primer
that Conjunction et al. 8 Primer
have Verb 9 Primer
I Pronoun 10 Pre-primer
it Pronoun 11 Pre-primer
for Preposition 12 Pre-primer
not Adverb et al. 13 Pre-primer
on Preposition 14 Primer
with Preposition 15 Primer
he Pronoun 16 Primer
as Adverb, conjunction, et al. 17 Grade 1
you Pronoun 18 Pre-primer
do Verb, noun 19 Primer
at Preposition 20 Primer
this Determiner, adverb, noun 21 Primer
but Preposition, adverb, conjunction 22 Primer
his Possessive pronoun 23 Grade 1
by Preposition 24 Grade 1
from Preposition 25 Grade 1
they Pronoun 26 Primer
we Pronoun 27 Pre-primer
say Verb et al. 28 Primer
her Possessive pronoun 29 Grade 1
she Pronoun 30 Primer
or Conjunction 31 Grade 2
an Article 32 Grade 1
will Verb, noun 33 Primer
my Possessive pronoun 34 Pre-primer
one Noun, adjective, et al. 35 Pre-primer
all Adjective 36 Primer
would Verb 37 Grade 2
there Adverb, pronoun, et al. 38
their Possessive pronoun 39 Grade 2
what Pronoun, adverb, et al. 40 Primer
so Conjuntion, adverb, et al. 41 Primer
up Adverb, preposition, et al. 42 Pre-primer
out Preposition 43 Primer
if Conjunction 44 Grade 3
about Preposition, adverb, et al. 45 Grade 3
who Pronoun, noun 46 Primer
get Verb 47 Primer
which 48 Grade 2
go Verb, noun 49 Pre-primer
me Pronoun 50 Pre-primer
when 51 Grade 1
make Verb, noun 52
can 53
like 54
time 55
no 56
just Adjective 57
him Pronoun 58
know Verb, noun 59
take Verb, noun 60
people Noun 61
into 62
year Noun 63
your Possessive pronoun 64
good Adjective 65
some 66
could Verb 67
them 68
see Verb 69
other 70
than 71
then 72
now 73
look Verb 74
only 75
come Verb 76
its Possessive pronoun 77
over Preposition 78
think 79
also 80
back 81
after Preposition 82
use Verb, noun 83
two 84
how 85
our Posessive pronoun 86
work Verb, noun 87
first 88
well Adverb 89
way 90
even 91
new Adjective et al. 92
want 93
because 94
any 95
these 96
give Verb 97
day 98
most 99
us Pronoun 100

Parts of speech

The following is the same list subdivided by part of speech.[1] The list labeled "Others" includes pronouns, possessives, articles, modal verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions.

Nouns

  1. time
  2. person
  3. year
  4. way
  5. day
  6. thing
  7. man
  8. world
  9. life
  10. hand
  11. part
  12. child
  13. eye
  14. woman
  15. place
  16. work
  17. week
  18. case
  19. point
  20. government
  21. company
  22. number
  23. group
  24. problem
  25. fact

Verbs

  1. be
  2. have
  3. do
  4. say
  5. get
  6. make
  7. go
  8. know
  9. take
  10. see
  11. come
  12. think
  13. look
  14. want
  15. give
  16. use
  17. find
  18. tell
  19. ask
  20. work
  21. seem
  22. feel
  23. try
  24. leave
  25. call

Adjectives

  1. good
  2. new
  3. first
  4. last
  5. long
  6. great
  7. little
  8. own
  9. other
  10. old
  11. right
  12. big
  13. high
  14. different
  15. small
  16. large
  17. next
  18. early
  19. young
  20. important
  21. few
  22. public
  23. bad
  24. same
  25. able

Prepositions

  1. to
  2. of
  3. in
  4. for
  5. on
  6. with
  7. at
  8. by
  9. from
  10. up
  11. about
  12. into
  13. over
  14. after

Others

  1. the
  2. and
  3. a
  4. that
  5. I
  6. it
  7. not
  8. he
  9. as
  10. you
  11. this
  12. but
  13. his
  14. they
  15. her
  16. she
  17. or
  18. an
  19. will
  20. my
  21. one
  22. all
  23. would
  24. there
  25. their

See also

Word lists

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "The Oxford English Corpus: Facts about the language". OxfordDictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. What is the commonest word?. Archived from the original on December 26, 2011. Retrieved June 22, 2011.
  2. ↑ "The Oxford English Corpus". AskOxford.com. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
  3. ↑ The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words.
  4. ↑ Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, Harper Perennial, 2001, page 58
  5. ↑ Benjamin Zimmer. June 22, 2006. Time after time after time.... Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
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