Most commonly used words: nouns, verbs, adjectives: (see ellipsis) Verbs: The Most Frequently Used Words

( NOUNS ) are: 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 A look at some pairs or groups of words makes interesting reading: man is 7th, whereas child is 12th and woman 14th the highest-ranking body part, hand, is 10th - eye is the next in 13th place, followed by head at 27 Work is at number 16 whereas play and rest do not feature in the top 100! war is at 49 with no sign of peace problem is 24th and there is no solution in sight friend is 30th with no enemy or foe book is number 41 whereas computer does not feature in the top 100 and is below paper Money is surprisingly low at 65 and cash is nowhere to be seen: this low ranking is perhaps explained by the fact that we have so many synonyms for money. As one would expect, the commonest verbs express basic concepts. Strikingly, the 25 most frequent verbs are all one-syllable words. The first two syllable verbs are become (26th) and include (27th). Furthermore 20 of these 25 are Old English words and three more get, seem and want entered English from Old Norse in the early medieval period. Only try and use came from Old French. It seems that English prefers terse, ancient words to describe actions or occurrences. The Most Frequently Used Words ( VERBS ) are: 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: Again, most of the top adjectives are one-syllable words and 17 out of 25 are from Old English. Only different, large and important are from Latin. In terms

of the words' meanings great is higher in the ranking than big probably because of its informal sense very good. Little is surprisingly high at 7 as compared with small at 15. Bad is unexpectedly low at 23: is this because we have such a large choice of synonyms available for expressing bad things? The Most Frequently Used Words ( ADJECTIVES ) are: 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 It is noticeable that many of the most frequently used words are short ones whose main purpose is to join other longer words rather than determine the meaning of a sentence.