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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]
Contents
1 100 most common words
1.1 Parts of speech
1.1.1 Nouns
1.1.2 Verbs
1.1.3 Adjectives
1.1.4 Prepositions
1.1.5 Others
2 See also
2.1 Word lists
3 References
4 External links
be Verb 2 Primer
to Preposition 3 Pre-primer
of Preposition 4 Grade 1
a Article 6 Pre-primer
in Preposition 7 Pre-primer
I Pronoun 10 Pre-primer
it Pronoun 11 Pre-primer
on Preposition 14 Primer
he Pronoun 16 Primer
at Preposition 20 Primer
by Preposition 24 Grade 1
we Pronoun 27 Pre-primer
or Conjunction 31 Grade 2
an Article 32 Grade 1
if Conjunction 44 Grade 3
which 48 Grade 2
me Pronoun 50 Pre-primer
when 51 Grade 1
can 53
like 54
time 55
no 56
just Adjective 57
him Pronoun 58
people Noun 61
into 62
year Noun 63
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
two 84
how 85
first 88
well Adverb 89
way 90
even 91
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.
See also
Basic English
Frequency analysis, the study of the frequency of letters or groups of letters
Letter frequencies
Oxford English Corpus
Swadesh list, a compilation of basic concepts for the purpose of historical-comparative linguistics
Zipf's law, a theory stating that the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in a
frequency table
Word lists
Dolch Word List, a list of frequently used English words
General Service List
Word lists by frequency
References
1. "The Oxford English Corpus: Facts about the language" (https://web.archive.org/web/20111226085859/h
ttp://oxforddictionaries.com/words/the-oec-facts-about-the-language). OxfordDictionaries.com. Oxford
University Press. What is the commonest word?. Archived from the original (http://oxforddictionaries.co
m/words/the-oec-facts-about-the-language) on December 26, 2011. Retrieved June 22, 2011.
2. "The Oxford English Corpus" (http://www.askoxford.com/oec/mainpage/?view=uk). AskOxford.com.
Retrieved June 22, 2006.
3. The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words (http://www.duboislc.org/EducationWatch/First100
Words.html).
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... (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelo
g/archives/003274.html). Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
External links