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Q: What is the first word in the english language?
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January 30, 2022
Do You Know the Origins of English? 16 English Words with Cool Life Stories
What if we told you that there’s a way to learn multiple English words at the same time?
All you have to do is learn one little English word and—poof!—you now know two, three or ten new words. Wow!
No, it’s not magic. All you have to do is learn a word’s origin along with its definition.
The origin of a word is the language it originally came from. English has many words that originally came from other languages. Some have been changed over years, others have stayed pretty much the same. When you learn a word, you should learn where it came from too!
But how will this help you double or triple your English vocabulary learning?
Often, when a foreign word is adopted by English, it takes on many new forms in the English language. This one new English word is put together with other English words, and these combinations create many more new words. However, these combinations are all related to the original word! If you know the original word, you’ll understand all of the combinations.
The more origins and original meanings you learn, the more you’ll see these words used and reused in English.
Through just one additional step to the vocabulary learning process—learning word origins—you can improve your understanding of English as a whole. Now that’s magical.
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This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you
can take anywhere.
Click here to get a copy. (Download)
English Is Always Growing
Last December, the Oxford English Dictionary added 500 new words and phrases to the dictionary. Not 500 words for the year—the English language gained 500 officially recognized words and phrases in just three months!
English is a living language. That means it’s always growing and changing. Many things influence the English language and its growth, but no matter how new or old a word is, you can probably trace it back to an original word or the moment when it was accepted into the language.
Whether the word is fleek (meaning “nice,” from 2003) or fleet (meaning a group of military ships, from the year 1200), most English words came from somewhere else.
Some words are borrowed from other languages and turn into English words with few or no changes, like the Italian words for pizza and zucchini. Other words are changed a lot more and become barely recognizable, like the Latin word pax which turned into peace in English.
No matter how different a word is from its origin, though, knowing where it came from can help you become a better English learner.
How Learning Word Origins Can Improve Your English
When you learn a new word, do you remember to learn its different forms and tenses as well? After all, knowing the word “to see” isn’t enough when you want to talk about something you saw last week. You’ll need to say “to see” in different forms and tenses, such as “I see,” “I saw,” “I’m going to see” and “you’ve seen.” You can apply the same idea to word origins.
When you learn the origin of a word, you might see it again in another word. When that happens, you might be able to get a basic understanding of the new word.
For example, look at these words:
Transport
Transgress
Transaction
Notice anything similar about them? They all have the word trans in them, which comes from the Latin word meaning “across.” Now even if you don’t know the full meaning of the words you can figure out that they deal with something going across.
Now look at the original meanings of the other parts of the words:
Port — To carry
So, it makes sense that to transport something means that you carry something across a space. For example, a bus might transport people from one city to another. A plane might transport people from one country to another.
Gress — To go
To transgress means that you cross a boundary, rule or law.
Action — To do
A transaction usually involves an exchange or trade of some kind. For example, when you give money to a cashier to buy a new shirt, this is a transaction.
You can probably figure out what the words mean from this information. See how much we knew before you even thought about opening a dictionary? It’s all thanks to knowing word origins!
Roots, Prefixes and Suffixes
English words are often made from root words, with prefixes and suffixes joined to them.
A prefix is added to the beginning of a word. The bi in bicycle is a prefix that means “two” (as in two wheels).
A suffix is added to the end of a word. The less in endless is a suffix that means “without” (which is why endless means “without an end”).
Once you remove all the prefixes and suffixes on a word, you’re left with its root, which is the part of the word that gives its main meaning. The words cycle and end in the above words are roots.
Different prefixes and suffixes are added to a root to change its meaning and create new words. For example, the root word hand can become unhand (to let go), handout (something you give for free) or even handsome (good looking).
All three words have different meanings, but they’re all related in one way or another to hand. The first two words seem related to hand, but how is handsome related to hand? A long time ago, the word used to mean “easy to handle” and then later became a term you use to show appreciation for someone.
Understanding roots and word origins like this will make it easier to understand new words, and even why they mean what they mean. The next time you see a word that has hand in it, you’ll be one step closer to understanding it before you even look it up.
Below are just 16 words. From these 16 words, you’ll learn the meanings of more than 30 other words! Once you know each word’s origin, you’ll begin to notice it in other words.
A majority of English word roots come from Latin and Greek. Even English words that come from other languages like French or German are sometimes originally Latin anyway—so they were Latin first, then became French or German and then they became English.
Many words on this list have gone through a few languages before getting to English, but in this post we’ll focus on just one main origin.
The “related words” sections give a sample of the other words you can learn using these origins, but there are many, many more out there. Most related words are broken down into their own origins, which are defined and then pointed out in parentheses (like these).
For example, if you see the words “together (sym),” you’ll know that the root sym means together. Simple!
And now, the words!
Greek
1. Phone
Meaning: A phone is a device that’s used to communicate with people from a distance (you might be using a phone to read this!).
Origin: The English word phone is actually short for telephone, which comes from the Greek words for sound (phon) and far away (tele).
Related words: Homophones are words that sound (phon) the same (homo) but are spelled differently, like hear and here. If you like hearing nice things you might enjoy a symphony, which is when many instruments play together (sym) to make a beautiful sound (phon)… usually.
2. Hyper
Meaning: Someone who is hyper is very energetic and lively.
Origin: Hyper actually a shortening of the word hyperactive, which combines the Greek word meaning “over, beyond” (hyper) and the Latin word for something that’s done (act).
Related words: When someone tells you they’re so hungry they could eat a horse, you know they’re just exaggerating by using a hyperbole—stretching the truth, like throwing (bole) something too far (hyper). No matter how exciting someone’s hyperbole is, try not to hyperventilate! That means to breathe or blow out air (ventilate) too much (hyper) in a way that makes you dizzy.
3. Sync
Meaning: When a few things happen at the same time or in the same way, they’re in sync. This word is a shortening of the word synchronize, but it’s used alone nowadays as a verb (your phone apps might even sync to make sure your files are up to date).
Origin: Sync comes from a Greek word that means to be together (sym or syn).
Related words: A synopsis is a summary of something like a movie or a play. It’s a way for everyone to see (opsis) the meaning together (syn). Synopsis and summary are actually synonyms, which are words that share the same (syn) meaning but have a different sound or name (onym).
Stay away from a play if the synopsis says the actors lip-sync. That means they move their lips (lip) together (syn) with the music without actually creating the sounds themselves.
4. Air
Meaning: Air is all around us. It’s the invisible gas that creates our atmosphere. Without air, we wouldn’t be able to breathe!
Origin: The word air has gone through a few languages before ending up in English, but it probably comes from the Greek word aer, which means to blow or breathe. You can actually find words that use both aer and air.
Related words: An airplane is a relatively flat object (plane) that flies in the air (air). Airplanes are aerodynamic, which means they use the air (aer) to power (dynamic) their flight. Don’t forget to look down when you’re in that plane, since aerial (of the air) views are pretty amazing!
Latin
5. Dense
Meaning: Something dense is packed tightly or very thick. For example, a fog can be so dense, or thick, that you can’t see much through it.
Origin: Dense comes from the Latin for “thick” (densus).
Related words: You can see condensation when evaporated water molecules join together (con) and becomes thick (dens) enough to form droplets. Density is the measure of how thickly packed (dens) something is, like people or things in one space.
6. Finish
Meaning: To finish something means to be done with it. In a few seconds you’ll be finished reading this sentence.
Origin: Finish comes from the Latin word finis which means “end.” In many words, this is shortened to fin.
Related words: You’ve probably defined a lot of vocabulary words in your English learning, which means you’ve looked up what the words mean. You could say that you’ve brought an end (both de and fin), to your lack of understanding! Don’t worry, there’s a finite number of words in English, which is a noun (ite) that means something that has a limit or end (fin). If English were infinite, or without (in) a limit, we would be learning it forever!
7. Form
Meaning: The form of something is its shape. As a verb, the word to form means to create something in a specific shape.
Origin: The word form comes from the Latin words for a mold (forma) and the Latin verb to form or to create (formare).
Related words: Many jobs and schools require people to wear a uniform, which is clothing that all looks the same or has one (uni) style (form). When places don’t have strict rules about what clothes to wear, they’re informal, or without (in) a specific shape (form).
8. Letter
Meaning: A letter is a symbol that represents a sound in a language, like a, b, c, or the rest of the alphabet. A letter is also a message you write and send to someone. Emails are digital letters!
Origin: In Latin, a letter was called a littera, and the lit and liter parts of this word appear in many English words that are related to letters.
Related words: If you’re reading this, you’re literate—you know how to read (liter). You probably read literature (books) and hopefully don’t take fiction too literally (seriously and exactly). All these words are forms of the stem liter, but their suffixes turn them into someone who reads (literate), something that exists (literature), and someone who does things to the letter (literally).
9. Part
Meaning: A part is a piece of a whole, something that isn’t complete. In verb form, the word to part means to divide or remove something.
Origin: This word comes from the Latin partire or partiri, which means to divide or share among others.
Related words: Somebody impartial has no (im) opinion about something (they take no part in the debate). You can be impartial about whether you live in a house or an apartment. An apartment is the result (ment) of dividing a building into smaller spaces (part). Wherever you live, make sure it’s safe—you wouldn’t want to put your family in jeopardy, which is a dangerous situation or, according to the original definition, an evenly divided (part) game (jeo).
10. Voice
Meaning: Your voice is the sound you use to speak. You can also voice, or state, an opinion.
Origin: The Latin word for voice is vox, and the word for “to call” is vocare. These two related words are the origin of a number of English words related to speech or voices. They usually include the root voc or vok.
Related words: An advocate is someone who calls (voc) others to help him (ate) support a cause or a person. Even someone who means well might end up provoking someone who doesn’t agree with them. To provoke someone means to call someone (vok) forward (pro) and challenge them in a way that usually makes them angry.
Old Norse
11. Loft
Meaning: A loft is a room right under the roof or very high up in a building. The loft in a house is usually used for storage, but building lofts are rented out as (usually smaller) living spaces.
Origin: The Old Norse word for air or sky was lopt, which is written as loft in English.
Related words: Something aloft is up in (a) the air (loft). If something is very tall, you would say it’s lofty, which is the adjective form of loft. In the same way, someone lofty has a very high (loft) opinion of themselves, which makes them act proud or snobbish.
French
12. Question
Meaning: Asking a question means trying to get information about something. Questions end in question marks (?).
Origin: Originally from Latin, English borrowed the Old French word question and never gave it back. The word means “to ask” or “to seek,” and it shows up in a number of ways in other words, from quire to quest. This one can be tough to spot since it switches between using the French and Latin versions of the word.
Related words: Some fantasy books have the main characters going on a quest, or a long and difficult search (quest) for something. Maybe you’re more interested in murder mystery books, which often have an inquest, or an official investigation (quest) into (in) someone’s suspicious death. If these types of books sound interesting, you can inquire, or ask (quest) about (in) them at your local library.
13. Peace
Meaning: Peace is a calm state of being. It means no wars or troubles. Peace is a wonderful thing!
Origin: The Latin pax and Old French pais both mean peace, and English words use both as prefixes and suffixes. Look for words with pac or peas in them (just not the kind of peas you eat. That’s a whole other word).
Related words: To pacify means to make (ify) someone calmer (pac). To calm someone, you can try to appease them, which means to (a) bring them peace (peas) by giving them what they want.
14. Liberty
Meaning: Liberty is the state of being free. The Statue of Liberty in New York is a symbol of freedom.
Origin: Another originally Latin word, liberty found its way into English through the Old French liberete, usually shortened to lib.
Related words: A liberator is a person (ator) who sets others free (lib) from a situation like slavery, jail or a bad leader. Becoming free means being open to changes, so it helps if you’re liberal—someone with a personality (al) that’s open to (lib) new ideas or ways of thinking.
Italian
15. Gusto
Meaning: Doing something with gusto means really enjoying it and being enthusiastic about it.
Origin: The Italian word gusto actually means taste, and comes from the Latin for taste, gustus.
Related words: You won’t do something with gusto if you find it disgusting. That’s the negative feeling you get about something you think is unpleasant—literally, without (dis) taste (gust).
Arabic
16. Check
Meaning: To check means to take a close look at something, or to make sure of something (verify it). For example, before you leave for work in the morning you might check that you have everything you need. Check can also be used as a verb that means to stop or slow something down.
Origin: The word check has an interesting history, moving from language to language and changing its meaning a little with each one. The word is originally from Persian and then Arabic, where it meant “king.” Over time, the word started being used in the game of chess and was defined as “to control.” Eventually the word’s meaning changed to what it is today. So much history in such a small word!
Related words: Leaving something unchecked means leaving something without (un) limits or control (check). If you leave weeds to grow unchecked in your yard, for example, they’ll take over and destroy your other plants. The word check on its own also refers to a piece of paper worth a certain amount of money (you write checks to pay bills). A raincheck used to be a ticket given to people attending outdoor events that had to be stopped because of rain. Today a raincheck is just a promise to do something another time.
The more roots and word origins you know, the easier it will become to learn new words.
Don’t stop learning here! Can you find words that use the related roots, too?
There are always new words to discover, and now you know exactly what to look for!
Download:
This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you
can take anywhere.
Click here to get a copy. (Download)
English has evolved over thousands of years, changing and adapting to suit the needs of the people who speak it. Someone alive twenty generations ago would have spoken a completely different version of English to the one we use today.
Let’s go back to where it all started.
Short history of English language
You might be thinking ‘English has been around a long time, how can its history possibly be short?‘, and you’d be 100% right. The history of English is anything but short, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll try to keep it as brief as possible. In the next few sections, we’ll be looking at the evolution of the English language from time period to time period.
Fig. 1 — The history of English is a long and rich one, and the language has changed dramatically over the centuries.
Here we go!
Evolution of English language
Each of the following sections will briefly map the evolution of the English language, as well as the different factors that would have influenced these changes.
Old English (5th-11th century)
English was originally a group of West-Germanic dialects (or ‘Anglo-Frisian’) spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, who had invaded Britain in around 5AD. Their language (‘Old English’) is the earliest form of the language we call English today.
Literature was written during this period, including the well-known poems ‘Beowulf’ (a story of a monster-slaying hero) and the Exeter Book (a collection of riddles). These have allowed linguists to develop an understanding of how Old English looked and how it was used.
Features of Old English include the use of grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter genders, as in German) and the use of four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative. Again, like modern-day German!). There were also a lot more inflectional endings, meaning that word order was much freer.
FUN FACT: Many Old English place names have survived up to the present day such as ‘Plymouth’ meaning the mouth of the River Plym and ‘Oxford’ meaning a ‘ford for Oxen’. England itself is named after the Angles (ie. ‘Land of the Angles’) as well as the area of ‘East-Anglia’!
Middle English (ca. 11th-15th century)
Fast forward to 1066 and Britain is experiencing another invasion, this time from the Normans. This marks the beginning of a new era of language called Early Middle English.
During this time, English was briefly replaced by Anglo-Norman French. This was mostly used by the upper classes, while regional varieties of English were still being used by ordinary people. Due to the occupation of the Anglo-Normans and the use of French in writing, not much Early Middle English literature has survived.
Many of the Old English grammatical features were lost or simplified. For example, grammatical case endings and other inflections disappeared. This led to sentence structures (or ‘syntax’) becoming more complex and word order becoming more important. Early Middle English also adopted plenty of Anglo-Norman French vocabulary, particularly in areas such as the church, law, politics, and the arts (ie. the areas occupied mainly by the upper-class population).
FUN FACT: We still see the remains of the Old English plural inflection -en in words such as ‘oxen’ and ‘children’!
Going into the Late Middle English period (ca. 14th-15th century), English saw further changes. This included a push for standardisation, changes in our writing system, and changes in pronunciation, which is part of the reason modern-day spellings are so irregular!
The most famous surviving piece of literature from this period is ‘The Canterbury Tales’, written by Chaucer in the 1390s. Chaucer’s writing was mostly based on the East-Midlands dialect, a dialect which was also used in the Chancery Standard. It was this Chancery Standard that William Caxton used when he introduced the printing press to Britain in 1476. This helped to stabilise the English language and drive standardisation.
Fig. 2 — If you’ve studied English Literature too, you’ll probably be familiar with some of Chaucer’s work.
Early Modern English (ca. 15th-18th century)
The 15th century marks the beginning of Early Modern English. A key event during this time was the Great Vowel Shift, an event true to its name. Over the course of around 300 years, the pronunciation of long vowels shifted ‘upwards’ to a shorter version of the vowel (either raised vowels or diphthongs).
The Middle English words ‘weef’ and ‘heer’ are now the words ‘wife’ and ‘her’. Try saying the Middle English word then the current word — notice how the vowels change from a lower position to higher up in the mouth.
The push for standardisation continued during this time, particularly in the spelling system. It was the London-based dialect that was seen as the standard, which led to the recognition of other ‘accents’ and ‘dialects’ (new terms acquired to describe regional variations). The use of the printing press was a way of establishing spelling conventions (ie. the ‘correct’ way of spelling words). The first English dictionary, called ‘A Table Alphabeticall’ was released in 1604 and, not soon after, the King James Bible was published, in 1611. However, standardisation was still a work in progress, so there were still many inconsistencies in spelling during this time.
The Early Modern English period was also the time of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), who is regarded as the greatest writer in the history of English. Shakespeare introduced over 1,700 words to the English language, including the words ‘lonely’, ‘fashionable’, and ‘swagger’. Pretty impressive stuff!
By the end of the 16th century, English was seen as of equal importance in learning to the classical languages, such as French and Latin. However, it was still seen as inelegant by some.
Late modern English (ca. 18th-Present)
The Late Modern English period saw the rise of the British Empire, as well as the industrial revolution. Modern English remained pretty much the same in terms of pronunciation, grammar, and spelling; however, a lot of new vocabulary was introduced.
The industrial revolution was a time of innovation, and new words were needed to name the inventions. New means of transportation, machinery, materials, and techniques were all being developed and many of these were of British origin. English became the common language of science and technology with many scientific publications being written in English.
Fig. 3 — The Industrial Revolution brought about much language change.
FUN FACT: The words ‘spinning wheel’ and ‘steam engine’ were coined during the industrial revolution.
Colonialism and the growth of the British Empire in the 16th century meant that English was adopted in regions across the world, including North America, Australia, New Zealand, India (and surrounding areas), and Africa.
Many countries in these areas have developed their own dialects of English over the years, which are now recognised as their own varieties and called ‘New Englishes’. Examples of ‘New Englishes’ include American English, Indian English, Caribbean English, and Singaporean English (sometimes called ‘Singlish’).
FUN FACT: New words and expressions were adopted into English from many different countries, such as the word ‘pyjamas’ deriving from the Hindi word ‘payjamah’.
In more recent times, we’ve seen the rising influence of American culture and American English. Throughout the 20th century, American influences such as big American corporations, Hollywood, pop songs, fast food, and fast fashion were distributed around the world. People were therefore listening to music, watching films, and buying products that were all written in the English language.
FUN FACT: The menu items of American fast-food chains often remain the same to give the full American experience. For example, in France, you’ll find ‘Big Mac’ and ‘McChicken’ written on the menu.
With over 1.35 billion speakers, English has become one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Today’s version of English is very different from the Old English spoken by our ancestors. English is still evolving and will continue to adapt to the linguistic needs of its speakers. The recent development of technology and text speak (e.g. ‘thank u, c u l8r’) is a prime example of this.
So what does the future hold for the English language? Well, according to linguist David Crystal, English is one of the most ‘desirable Lingua Franca[s]’ worldwide (Crystal 1999). It exists in many different varieties, from British English to Indian English to Singaporean English, and we expect to see these varieties develop even further as time goes on.
English Language family
Like people, languages can be related to each other. Countries in the same family usually have a common linguistic ancestry (ie. derive from the same language).
The English language belongs to the Indo-European language family (which consists of most languages in Europe and European settlement). The Indo-European family can then be split further into groups (eg. the Romance languages and Germanic languages). English is part of the West-Germanic family, along with German and Dutch. You can see the language groups as siblings — they share common parents but still have their differences!
The History of English Language — Key takeaways
- The English language belongs to the Indo-European language family and originated as a West-Germanic dialect.
- Old English (5th-11th century) was brought to Britain by the Anglo-Saxons in 5AD Britain and was very different to what we know today.
- The Middle English period (11th-15th century) began when the Normans invaded Britain in 1066 bringing Anglo-Norman French. During this period there was a push for standardisation and the printing press was established.
- The Early Modern English period (15th-18th century) saw the Great Vowel Shift and was the time of William Shakespeare.
- The Late Modern English period (18th-Present) saw the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the British Empire. There has also been the influence of American culture and English has become one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
References
- Crystal, D. ‘The future of Englishes’, English Today, 1999, 15 (2), 10-20.
The term «English» is derived from Anglisc, the speech of the Angles—one of the three Germanic tribes that invaded England during the fifth century. The English language is the primary language of several countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and many of its former colonies, and the United States, and the second language in a number of multilingual countries, including India, Singapore, and the Philippines.
It’s an official language in several African countries as well, such as Liberia, Nigeria, and South Africa, but is spoken worldwide in more than 100. It’s learned around the world by children in school as a foreign language and often becomes a common denominator between people of different nationalities when they meet while traveling, doing business, or in other contexts.
According to Christine Kenneally in her book «The First Word,» «Today there are about 6,000 languages in the world, and half of the world’s population speaks only 10 of them. English is the single most dominant of these 10. British colonialism initiated the spread of English across the globe; it has been spoken nearly everywhere and has become even more prevalent since World War II, with the global reach of American power.»
The influence of the English language has also spread globally through American pop culture, music, movies, advertising, and TV shows.
Spoken Worldwide
A third of the world’s population speaks English as a first or secondary language, over 2 billion people.
Tony Reilly noted an earlier estimate in «English Changes Lives» in Britain’s The Sunday Times, «There are now estimated to be 1.5 billion English speakers globally: 375 million who speak English as their first language, 375 million as a second language and 750 million who speak English as a foreign language.» He continued:
«The elites of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon have dumped French in favour of English. India has reversed its former campaign against the language of its colonial rulers, and millions of Indian parents are now enrolling their children in English-language schools—in recognition of the importance of English for social mobility. Since 2005, India has had the world’s largest English-speaking population, with far many more people using the language than before independence. Rwanda, in a move dictated as much by regional economics as post-genocide politics, has decreed a wholesale switch to English as its medium of instruction. And China is about to launch a colossal programme to tackle one of the few remaining obstacles to its breakneck economic expansion: a paucity of English-speakers.
«English has official or special status in at least 75 countries with a combined population of two billion people. It is estimated that one out of four people worldwide speak English with some degree of competence.»
When English Was First Spoken
English derived from a Proto-Indo-European language spoken by nomads wandering Europe about 5,000 years ago. German also came from this language. English is conventionally divided into three major historical periods: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Old English was brought to the British Isles by Germanic peoples: the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles, starting in 449. With the establishment of centers of learning in Winchester, histories being written, and the translation of important Latin texts into West Saxon’s dialect in 800s, the dialect spoken there became the official «Old English.» Adopted words came from Scandinavian languages.
Evolution of the English Language
In the Norman conquest in 1066, the Norman French dialect (which was French with a Germanic influence) arrived in Britain. The center of learning gradually moved from Winchester to London, so Old English no longer dominated. Norman French, spoken by the aristocracy, and Old English, spoken by the common people, intermingled over time to become Middle English. By the 1200s, about 10,000 French words had been incorporated into English. Some words served as replacements for the English words, and others coexisted with slightly changed meanings.
Spellings changed as people with the Norman French background wrote down the English words as they sounded. Other changes include the loss of gender for nouns, some word forms (called inflections), the silent «e,» and the coalescing of a more constrained word order. Chaucer wrote in Middle English in the late 1300s. Latin (church, courts), French, and English were widely used in Britain at the time, though English still had many regional dialects that caused some confusion.
Structural and grammatical changes happened as well. Charles Barber points out in «The English Language: A Historical Introduction»:
«One of the major syntactic changes in the English language since Anglo-Saxon times has been the disappearance of the S[ubject]-O[bject]-V[erb] and V[erb]-S[ubject]-O[bject] types of word-order, and the establishment of the S[ubject]-V[erb]-O[bject] type as normal. The S-O-V type disappeared in the early Middle Ages, and the V-S-O type was rare after the middle of the seventeenth century. V-S word-order does indeed still exist in English as a less common variant, as in ‘Down the road came a whole crowd of children,’ but the full V-S-O type hardly occurs today.»
Usage of Modern English
Many scholars consider the early Modern English period to have begun about 1500. During the Renaissance, English incorporated many words from Latin via French, from classical Latin (not just church Latin), and Greek. The King James Bible (1611) and works of William Shakespeare are considered in Modern English.
A major evolution in the language, ending the «early» subportion of the Modern English period, was when the pronunciation of long vowels changed. It’s called the Great Vowel Shift and is considered to have happened from the 1400s through the 1750s or so. For example, a Middle English long high vowel such as e eventually changed to a Modern English long i, and a Middle English long oo evolved into a Modern English ou sound. Long mid- and low-vowels changed as well, such as a long a evolving to a Modern English long e and an ah sound changing to the long a sound.
So to clarify, the term «Modern» English refers more to the relative stasis of its pronunciation, grammar, and spelling than it has anything to do with current vocabulary or slang, which is always changing.
Today’s English
English is ever adopting new words from other languages (350 languages, according to David Crystal in «English as a Global Language»). About three-quarters of its words come from Greek and Latin, but, as Ammon Shea points out in «Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation,» «it is certainly not a Romance language, it is a Germanic one. Evidence of this may be found in the fact that it is quite easy to create a sentence without words of Latin origin, but pretty much impossible to make one that has no words from Old English.»
With so many sources behind its evolution, English is malleable, with words also being invented regularly as well. Robert Burchfield, in «The English Language,» calls the language «a fleet of juggernaut trucks that goes on regardless. No form of linguistic engineering and no amount of linguistic legislation will prevent the myriads of change that lie ahead.»
Additions to the Dictionary
After a certain amount of usage, dictionary editors decide whether a new word has enough staying power to add it to the dictionary. Merriam-Webster notes that its editors spend an hour or two daily reading a cross-section of material looking for new words, new meanings to old words, new forms, new spellings, and the like. The words are logged into a database with their context for documentation and further analysis.
Before being added to the dictionary, a new word or change to an existing word must have a considerable amount of use over time in a variety of types of publications and/or media (widespread use, not just in jargon). The Oxford English Dictionary has a similar process for its 250 lexicographers and editors who are continually researching and updating language information.
Varieties of English
Just as the United States has regional dialects and there are differences in pronunciation and words in British and American English, the language has local varieties around the world: African-American Vernacular English, American, British, Canadian, Caribbean, Chicano, Chinese, Euro-English, Hinglish, Indian, Irish, Nigerian, Nonstandard English, Pakistani, Scottish, Singapore, Standard American, Standard British, Standard English, and Zimbabwean.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.[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 Old English origin,[4] except for «people», ultimately from Latin «populus», 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 (is, was, am, are, were, etc.), and contractions of those conjugations.[5] These top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.[1]
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).[1] 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.[6] As an example, «out» occurs in at least 560 phrasal verbs[7] and appears in nearly 1700 multiword expressions.[8]
The table also includes frequencies from other corpora. Note that 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 | OEC rank | COCA rank[9] | Dolch level | Polysemy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| the | Article | 1 | 1 | Pre-primer | 12 |
| be | Verb | 2 | 2 | Primer | 21 |
| to | Preposition | 3 | 7, 9 | Pre-primer | 17 |
| of | Preposition | 4 | 4 | Grade 1 | 12 |
| and | Conjunction | 5 | 3 | Pre-primer | 16 |
| a | Article | 6 | 5 | Pre-primer | 20 |
| in | Preposition | 7 | 6, 128, 3038 | Pre-primer | 23 |
| that | Conjunction et al. | 8 | 12, 27, 903 | Primer | 17 |
| have | Verb | 9 | 8 | Primer | 25 |
| I | Pronoun | 10 | 11 | Pre-primer | 7 |
| it | Pronoun | 11 | 10 | Pre-primer | 18 |
| for | Preposition | 12 | 13, 2339 | Pre-primer | 19 |
| not | Adverb et al. | 13 | 28, 2929 | Pre-primer | 5 |
| on | Preposition | 14 | 17, 155 | Primer | 43 |
| with | Preposition | 15 | 16 | Primer | 11 |
| he | Pronoun | 16 | 15 | Primer | 7 |
| as | Adverb, conjunction, et al. | 17 | 33, 49, 129 | Grade 1 | 17 |
| you | Pronoun | 18 | 14 | Pre-primer | 9 |
| do | Verb, noun | 19 | 18 | Primer | 38 |
| at | Preposition | 20 | 22 | Primer | 14 |
| this | Determiner, adverb, noun | 21 | 20, 4665 | Primer | 9 |
| but | Preposition, adverb, conjunction | 22 | 23, 1715 | Primer | 17 |
| his | Possessive pronoun | 23 | 25, 1887 | Grade 1 | 6 |
| by | Preposition | 24 | 30, 1190 | Grade 1 | 19 |
| from | Preposition | 25 | 26 | Grade 1 | 4 |
| they | Pronoun | 26 | 21 | Primer | 6 |
| we | Pronoun | 27 | 24 | Pre-primer | 6 |
| say | Verb et al. | 28 | 19 | Primer | 17 |
| her | Possessive pronoun | 29, 106 | 42 | Grade 1 | 3 |
| she | Pronoun | 30 | 31 | Primer | 7 |
| or | Conjunction | 31 | 32 | Grade 2 | 11 |
| an | Article | 32 | (a) | Grade 1 | 6 |
| will | Verb, noun | 33 | 48, 1506 | Primer | 16 |
| my | Possessive pronoun | 34 | 44 | Pre-primer | 5 |
| one | Noun, adjective, et al. | 35 | 51, 104, 839 | Pre-primer | 24 |
| all | Adjective | 36 | 43, 222 | Primer | 15 |
| would | Verb | 37 | 41 | Grade 2 | 13 |
| there | Adverb, pronoun, et al. | 38 | 53, 116 | Primer | 14 |
| their | Possessive pronoun | 39 | 36 | Grade 2 | 2 |
| what | Pronoun, adverb, et al. | 40 | 34 | Primer | 19 |
| so | Conjunction, adverb, et al. | 41 | 55, 196 | Primer | 18 |
| up | Adverb, preposition, et al. | 42 | 50, 456 | Pre-primer | 50 |
| out | Preposition | 43 | 64, 149 | Primer | 38 |
| if | Conjunction | 44 | 40 | Grade 3 | 9 |
| about | Preposition, adverb, et al. | 45 | 46, 179 | Grade 3 | 18 |
| who | Pronoun, noun | 46 | 38 | Primer | 5 |
| get | Verb | 47 | 39 | Primer | 37 |
| which | Pronoun | 48 | 58 | Grade 2 | 7 |
| go | Verb, noun | 49 | 35 | Pre-primer | 54 |
| me | Pronoun | 50 | 61 | Pre-primer | 10 |
| when | Adverb | 51 | 57, 136 | Grade 1 | 11 |
| make | Verb, noun | 52 | 45 | Grade 2 [as «made»] | 48 |
| can | Verb, noun | 53 | 37, 2973 | Pre-primer | 18 |
| like | Preposition, verb | 54 | 74, 208, 1123, 1684, 2702 | Primer | 26 |
| time | Noun | 55 | 52 | Dolch list of 95 nouns | 14 |
| no | Determiner, adverb | 56 | 93, 699, 916, 1111, 4555 | Primer | 10 |
| just | Adjective | 57 | 66, 1823 | 14 | |
| him | Pronoun | 58 | 68 | 5 | |
| know | Verb, noun | 59 | 47 | 13 | |
| take | Verb, noun | 60 | 63 | 66 | |
| people | Noun | 61 | 62 | 9 | |
| into | Preposition | 62 | 65 | 10 | |
| year | Noun | 63 | 54 | 7 | |
| your | Possessive pronoun | 64 | 69 | 4 | |
| good | Adjective | 65 | 110, 2280 | 32 | |
| some | Determiner, pronoun | 66 | 60 | 10 | |
| could | Verb | 67 | 71 | 6 | |
| them | Pronoun | 68 | 59 | 3 | |
| see | Verb | 69 | 67 | 25 | |
| other | Adjective, pronoun | 70 | 75, 715, 2355 | 12 | |
| than | Conjunction, preposition | 71 | 73, 712 | 4 | |
| then | Adverb | 72 | 77 | 10 | |
| now | Preposition | 73 | 72, 1906 | 13 | |
| look | Verb | 74 | 85, 604 | 17 | |
| only | Adverb | 75 | 101, 329 | 11 | |
| come | Verb | 76 | 70 | 20 | |
| its | Possessive pronoun | 77 | 78 | 2 | |
| over | Preposition | 78 | 124, 182 | 19 | |
| think | Verb | 79 | 56 | 10 | |
| also | Adverb | 80 | 87 | 2 | |
| back | Noun, adverb | 81 | 108, 323, 1877 | 36 | |
| after | Preposition | 82 | 120, 260 | 14 | |
| use | Verb, noun | 83 | 92, 429 | 17 | |
| two | Noun | 84 | 80 | 6 | |
| how | Adverb | 85 | 76 | 11 | |
| our | Possessive pronoun | 86 | 79 | 3 | |
| work | Verb, noun | 87 | 117, 199 | 28 | |
| first | Adjective | 88 | 86, 2064 | 10 | |
| well | Adverb | 89 | 100, 644 | 30 | |
| way | Noun, adverb | 90 | 84, 4090 | 16 | |
| even | Adjective | 91 | 107, 484 | 23 | |
| new | Adjective et al. | 92 | 88 | 18 | |
| want | Verb | 93 | 83 | 10 | |
| because | Conjunction | 94 | 89, 509 | 7 | |
| any | Pronoun | 95 | 109, 4720 | 4 | |
| these | Pronoun | 96 | 82 | 2 | |
| give | Verb | 97 | 98 | 19 | |
| day | Noun | 98 | 90 | 9 | |
| most | Adverb | 99 | 144, 187 | 12 | |
| us | Pronoun | 100 | 113 | 6 |
Parts of speech
The following is a very similar list, subdivided by part of speech.[1] 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 |
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
- ^ a b c d «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.
- ^ «The Oxford English Corpus». AskOxford.com. Archived from the original on May 4, 2006. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
- ^ The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words Archived 2013-06-16 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, Harper Perennial, 2001, page 58
- ^ Benjamin Zimmer. June 22, 2006. Time after time after time…. Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
- ^ Benjamin, Martin (2019). «Polysemy in top 100 Oxford English Corpus words within Wiktionary». Teach You Backwards. Retrieved December 28, 2019.
- ^ Garcia-Vega, M (2010). «Teasing out the meaning of «out»«. 29th International Conference on Lexis and Grammar.
- ^ «out — English-French Dictionary». www.wordreference.com. Retrieved November 22, 2022.
- ^ «Word frequency: based on 450 million word COCA corpus». www.wordfrequency.info. Retrieved April 11, 2018.