Most common words in English

Studies that estimate and rank 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 massive text corpus that is written in the English language.

In total, the texts in the Oxford English Corpus contain more than 2 billion words. 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.

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.The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words . 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 either Old English or Old Norse origin,Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, Harper Perennial, 2001, page 58 except for just, ultimately from Latin "iustus", people, ultimately from Latin "populus", use, ultimately from Latin "usare", and because, in part from Latin "causa".

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 (am, are, is, was, were, etc.), and contractions of those conjugations.Benjamin Zimmer. June 22, 2006. Time after time after time.... Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006. These top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.

100 most common words A list of 100 words that occur most frequently in written English is given below, based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus (a collection of texts in the English language, comprising over 2 billion words). A part of speech is provided for most of the words, but part-of-speech categories vary between analyses, and not all possibilities are listed. For example, "I" may be a pronoun or a Roman numeral; "to" may be a preposition or an infinitive marker; "time" may be a noun or a verb. Also, a single spelling can represent more than one root word. For example, "singer" may be a form of either "sing" or "singe". Different corpora may treat such difference differently.

The number of distinct senses that are listed in Wiktionary is shown in the polysemy column. For example, "out" can refer to an escape, a removal from play in baseball, or any of 36 other concepts. On average, each word in the list has 15.38 senses. The sense count does not include the use of terms in phrasal verbs such as "put out" (as in "inconvenienced") and other multiword expressions such as the interjection "get out!", where the word "out" does not have an individual meaning. As an example, "out" occurs in at least 560 phrasal verbs and appears in nearly 1700 multiword expressions.

The table also includes frequencies from other corpora. As well as usage differences, lemmatisation may differ from corpus to corpus – for example splitting the prepositional use of "to" from the use as a particle. Also, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) list includes dispersion as well as frequency to calculate rank.

Word Parts of speech rank COCA rankDolch level Polysemy the Article 1 1 Pre-primer12 be Verb 2 2 Primer21 to Preposition 3 7, 9 Pre-primer17 of Preposition 4 4 Grade 112 and Coordinator 5 3 Pre-primer16 a Article 6 5 Pre-primer20 in Preposition 7 6, 128, 3038 Pre-primer23 that Subordinator, determiner 8 12, 27, 903 Primer17 have Verb 9 8 Primer25 I Pronoun 10 11 Pre-primer7 it Pronoun 11 10 Pre-primer18 for Preposition 12 13, 2339 Pre-primer19 not Adverb et al. 13 28, 2929 Pre-primer5 on Preposition 14 17, 155 Primer43 with Preposition 15 16 Primer11 he Pronoun 16 15 Primer7 as Adverb, preposition 17 33, 49, 129 Grade 117 you Pronoun 18 14 Pre-primer9 do Verb, noun 19 18 Primer38 at Preposition 20 22 Primer14 this Determiner, adverb, noun 21 20, 4665 Primer9 but Preposition, adverb, coordinator 22 23, 1715 Primer17 his Possessive pronoun 23 25, 1887 Grade 16 by Preposition 24 30, 1190 Grade 119 from Preposition 25 26 Grade 14 they Pronoun 26 21 Primer6 we Pronoun 27 24 Pre-primer6 say Verb et al. 28 19 Primer17 her Possessive pronoun 29, 106 42 Grade 13 she Pronoun 30 31 Primer7 or Coordinator 31 32 Grade 211 an Article 32 (a) Grade 16 will Verb, noun 33 48, 1506 Primer16 my Possessive pronoun 34 44 Pre-primer5 one Noun, adjective, et al. 35 51, 104, 839 Pre-primer24 all Adjective 36 43, 222 Primer15 would Verb 37 41 Grade 213 there Adverb, pronoun, et al. 38 53, 116 Primer14 their Possessive pronoun 39 36 Grade 22 what Pronoun, adverb, et al. 40 34 Primer19 so Coordinator, adverb, et al. 41 55, 196 Primer18 up Adverb, preposition, et al. 42 50, 456 Pre-primer50 out Preposition 43 64, 149 Primer38 if Preposition 44 40 Grade 39 about Preposition, adverb, et al. 45 46, 179 Grade 318 who Pronoun, noun 46 38 Primer5 get Verb 47 39 Primer37 which Pronoun 48 58 Grade 27 go Verb, noun 49 35 Pre-primer54 me Pronoun 50 61 Pre-primer10 when Adverb 51 57, 136 Grade 111 make Verb, noun 52 45 Grade 2 [as "made"]48 can Verb, noun 53 37, 2973 Pre-primer18 like Preposition, verb 54 74, 208, 1123, 1684, 2702 Primer26 time Noun 55 52 Dolch list of 95 nouns14 no Determiner, adverb 56 93, 699, 916, 1111, 4555 Primer10 just Adjective 57 66, 1823 Grade 114 him Pronoun 58 68 Grade 15 know Verb, noun 59 47 Grade 113 take Verb, noun 60 63 Grade 166 people Noun 61 62 9 into Preposition 62 65 Primer10 year Noun 63 54 7 your Possessive pronoun 64 69 Grade 24 good Adjective 65 110, 2280 Primer32 some Determiner 66 60 Grade 110 could Verb 67 71 Grade 16 them Pronoun 68 59 Grade 13 see Verb 69 67 25 other Adjective, pronoun 70 75, 715, 2355 12 than Preposition 71 73, 712 4 then Adverb 72 77 Grade 110 now Preposition 73 72, 1906 Primer13 look Verb 74 85, 604 Pre-primer17 only Adverb 75 101, 329 Grade 311 come Verb 76 70 Pre-primer20 its Possessive pronoun 77 78 Grade 22 over Preposition 78 124, 182 Grade 119 think Verb 79 56 Grade 110 also Adverb 80 87 2 back Noun, adverb 81 108, 323, 1877 Dolch list of 95 nouns36 after Preposition 82 120, 260 Grade 114 use Verb, noun 83 92, 429 Grade 217 two Noun 84 80 Pre-primer6 how Adverb 85 76 Grade 111 our Possessive pronoun 86 79 Primer3 work Verb, noun 87 117, 199 Grade 228 first Adjective 88 86, 2064 Grade 210 well Adverb 89 100, 644 Primer30 way Noun, adverb 90 84, 4090 Dolch list of 95 nouns16 even Adjective 91 107, 484 23 new Adjective et al. 92 88 Primer18 want Verb 93 83 Primer10 because Preposition 94 89, 509 Grade 27 any Pronoun 95 109, 4720 Grade 14 these Pronoun 96 82 Grade 22 give Verb 97 98 Grade 119 day Noun 98 90 Dolch list of 95 nouns9 most Adverb 99 144, 187 12 us Pronoun 100 113 Grade 26

Parts of speech

The following is a very similar list, also from the OEC, subdivided by part of speech. The list labeled "Others" includes pronouns, possessives, articles, modal verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions.

Rank Nouns Verbs Adjectives Prepositions Others 1 time be good to the 2 person have new of and 3 year do first in a 4 way say last for that 5 day get long on I 6 thing make great with it 7 man go little at not 8 world know own by he 9 life take other from as 10 hand see old up you 11 part come right about this 12 child think big into but 13 eye look high over his 14 woman want different after they 15 place give small her 16 work use large she 17 week find next or 18 case tell early an 19 point ask young will 20 government work important my 21 company seem few one 22 number feel public all 23 group try bad would 24 problem leave same there 25 fact call able their

Most common words in English

Bron en licentie