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.
External links
Our list of the 1000 most common and frequently used words in English IN ORDER OF FREQUENCY.
Because this list of the 1000 most common words is in order of frequency, the first word on the list is used 2x more than the word below it, and the the next word is used 2x more than the word after that (and so on). Focus on the first 100 words, then the next 100 for the most efficient way to learn English vocabulary. After that, you can really challenge yourself with our list of 3000 English words and here is a version with Hindi translation.
- the
- be
- and
- a
- of
- to
- in
- i
- you
- it
- have
- to
- that
- for
- do
- he
- with
- on
- this
- n’t
- we
- that
- not
- but
- they
- say
- at
- what
- his
- from
- go
- or
- by
- get
- she
- my
- can
- as
- know
- if
- me
- your
- all
- who
- about
- their
- will
- so
- would
- make
- just
- up
- think
- time
- there
- see
- her
- as
- out
- one
- come
- people
- take
- year
- him
- them
- some
- want
- how
- when
- which
- now
- like
- other
- could
- our
- into
- here
- then
- than
- look
- way
- more
- these
- no
- thing
- well
- because
- also
- two
- use
- tell
- good
- first
- man
- day
- find
- give
- more
- new
- one
- us
- any
- those
- very
- her
- need
- back
- there
- should
- even
- only
- many
- really
- work
- life
- why
- right
- down
- on
- try
- let
- something
- too
- call
- woman
- may
- still
- through
- mean
- after
- never
- no
- world
- in
- feel
- yeah
- great
- last
- child
- oh
- over
- ask
- when
- as
- school
- state
- much
- talk
- out
- keep
- leave
- put
- like
- help
- big
- where
- same
- all
- own
- while
- start
- three
- high
- every
- another
- become
- most
- between
- happen
- family
- over
- president
- old
- yes
- house
- show
- again
- student
- so
- seem
- might
- part
- hear
- its
- place
- problem
- where
- believe
- country
- always
- week
- point
- hand
- off
- play
- turn
- few
- group
- such
- against
- run
- guy
- about
- case
- question
- work
- night
- live
- game
- number
- write
- bring
- without
- money
- lot
- most
- book
- system
- government
- next
- city
- company
- story
- today
- job
- move
- must
- bad
- friend
- during
- begin
- love
- each
- hold
- different
- american
- little
- before
- ever
- word
- fact
- right
- read
- anything
- nothing
- sure
- small
- month
- program
- maybe
- right
- under
- business
- home
- kind
- stop
- pay
- study
- since
- issue
- name
- idea
- room
- percent
- far
- away
- law
- actually
- large
- though
- provide
- lose
- power
- kid
- war
- understand
- head
- mother
- real
- best
- team
- eye
- long
- long
- side
- water
- young
- wait
- okay
- both
- yet
- after
- meet
- service
- area
- important
- person
- hey
- thank
- much
- someone
- end
- change
- however
- only
- around
- hour
- everything
- national
- four
- line
- girl
- around
- watch
- until
- father
- sit
- create
- information
- car
- learn
- least
- already
- kill
- minute
- party
- include
- stand
- together
- back
- follow
- health
- remember
- often
- reason
- speak
- ago
- set
- black
- member
- community
- once
- social
- news
- allow
- win
- body
- lead
- continue
- whether
- enough
- spend
- level
- able
- political
- almost
- boy
- university
- before
- stay
- add
- later
- change
- five
- probably
- center
- among
- face
- public
- die
- food
- else
- history
- buy
- result
- morning
- off
- parent
- office
- course
- send
- research
- walk
- door
- white
- several
- court
- home
- grow
- better
- open
- moment
- including
- consider
- both
- such
- little
- within
- second
- late
- street
- free
- better
- everyone
- policy
- table
- sorry
- care
- low
- human
- please
- hope
- TRUE
- process
- teacher
- data
- offer
- death
- whole
- experience
- plan
- easy
- education
- build
- expect
- fall
- himself
- age
- hard
- sense
- across
- show
- early
- college
- music
- appear
- mind
- class
- police
- use
- effect
- season
- tax
- heart
- son
- art
- possible
- serve
- break
- although
- end
- market
- even
- air
- force
- require
- foot
- up
- listen
- agree
- according
- anyone
- baby
- wrong
- love
- cut
- decide
- republican
- full
- behind
- pass
- interest
- sometimes
- security
- eat
- report
- control
- rate
- local
- suggest
- report
- nation
- sell
- action
- support
- wife
- decision
- receive
- value
- base
- pick
- phone
- thanks
- event
- drive
- strong
- reach
- remain
- explain
- site
- hit
- pull
- church
- model
- perhaps
- relationship
- six
- fine
- movie
- field
- raise
- less
- player
- couple
- million
- themselves
- record
- especially
- difference
- light
- development
- federal
- former
- role
- pretty
- myself
- view
- price
- effort
- nice
- quite
- along
- voice
- finally
- department
- either
- toward
- leader
- because
- photo
- wear
- space
- project
- return
- position
- special
- million
- film
- need
- major
- type
- town
- article
- road
- form
- chance
- drug
- economic
- situation
- choose
- practice
- cause
- happy
- science
- join
- teach
- early
- develop
- share
- yourself
- carry
- clear
- brother
- matter
- dead
- image
- star
- cost
- simply
- post
- society
- picture
- piece
- paper
- energy
- personal
- building
- military
- open
- doctor
- activity
- exactly
- american
- media
- miss
- evidence
- product
- realize
- save
- arm
- technology
- catch
- comment
- look
- term
- color
- cover
- describe
- guess
- choice
- source
- mom
- soon
- director
- international
- rule
- campaign
- ground
- election
- face
- uh
- check
- page
- fight
- itself
- test
- patient
- produce
- certain
- whatever
- half
- video
- support
- throw
- third
- care
- rest
- recent
- available
- step
- ready
- opportunity
- official
- oil
- call
- organization
- character
- single
- current
- likely
- county
- future
- dad
- whose
- less
- shoot
- industry
- second
- list
- general
- stuff
- figure
- attention
- forget
- risk
- no
- focus
- short
- fire
- dog
- red
- hair
- point
- condition
- wall
- daughter
- before
- deal
- author
- truth
- upon
- husband
- period
- series
- order
- officer
- close
- land
- note
- computer
- thought
- economy
- goal
- bank
- behavior
- sound
- deal
- certainly
- nearly
- increase
- act
- north
- well
- blood
- culture
- medical
- ok
- everybody
- top
- difficult
- close
- language
- window
- response
- population
- lie
- tree
- park
- worker
- draw
- plan
- drop
- push
- earth
- cause
- per
- private
- tonight
- race
- than
- letter
- other
- gun
- simple
- course
- wonder
- involve
- hell
- poor
- each
- answer
- nature
- administration
- common
- no
- hard
- message
- song
- enjoy
- similar
- congress
- attack
- past
- hot
- seek
- amount
- analysis
- store
- defense
- bill
- like
- cell
- away
- performance
- hospital
- bed
- board
- protect
- century
- summer
- material
- individual
- recently
- example
- represent
- fill
- state
- place
- animal
- fail
- factor
- natural
- sir
- agency
- usually
- significant
- help
- ability
- mile
- statement
- entire
- democrat
- floor
- serious
- career
- dollar
- vote
- sex
- compare
- south
- forward
- subject
- financial
- identify
- beautiful
- decade
- bit
- reduce
- sister
- quality
- quickly
- act
- press
- worry
- accept
- enter
- mention
- sound
- thus
- plant
- movement
- scene
- section
- treatment
- wish
- benefit
- interesting
- west
- candidate
- approach
- determine
- resource
- claim
- answer
- prove
- sort
- enough
- size
- somebody
- knowledge
- rather
- hang
- sport
- tv
- loss
- argue
- left
- note
- meeting
- skill
- card
- feeling
- despite
- degree
- crime
- that
- sign
- occur
- imagine
- vote
- near
- king
- box
- present
- figure
- seven
- foreign
- laugh
- disease
- lady
- beyond
- discuss
- finish
- design
- concern
- ball
- east
- recognize
- apply
- prepare
- network
- huge
- success
- district
- cup
- name
- physical
- growth
- rise
- hi
- standard
- force
- sign
- fan
- theory
- staff
- hurt
- legal
- september
- set
- outside
- et
- strategy
- clearly
- property
- lay
- final
- authority
- perfect
- method
- region
- since
- impact
- indicate
- safe
- committee
- supposed
- dream
- training
- shit
- central
- option
- eight
- particularly
- completely
- opinion
- main
- ten
- interview
- exist
- remove
- dark
- play
- union
- professor
- pressure
- purpose
- stage
- blue
- herself
- sun
- pain
- artist
- employee
- avoid
- account
- release
- fund
- environment
- treat
- specific
- version
- shot
- hate
- reality
- visit
- club
- justice
- river
- brain
- memory
- rock
- talk
- camera
- global
- various
- arrive
- notice
- bit
- detail
- challenge
- argument
- lot
- nobody
- weapon
- best
- station
- island
- absolutely
- instead
- discussion
- instead
- affect
- design
- little
- anyway
- respond
- control
- trouble
- conversation
- manage
- close
- date
- public
- army
- top
- post
- charge
- seat
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When learning a new language the amount of vocabulary can be daunting. Have you heard people say things like: “We only use around 700 words when we talk?” This is true to some degree. The number of words to learn to speak a language really depends on your purpose. Remember that 300 to 600 words may be enough to travel, but at least 1,000 words are necessary for a conversation. The most important thing is not knowing how many words you need to speak a language, but which words to know. Complete fluency is in the 10,000 word range. According to the economist: “Most adult native test-takers range from 20,000–35,000 words. Average native test-takers of age 8 already know 10,000 words. Average native test-takers of age 4 already know 5,000 words. Adult native test-takers learn almost 1 new word a day until middle age”
10,000 words. Wow. That does seem daunting when you are first starting out. But like anything new, you just have to start small and keep adding to it. Why not start smart as well? Below is a list of 100 words that are the most commonly used in the Spanish language.
That’s why we wrote this blog article: Find the 1000 words used most often in spoken English below.
WHY THESE 1000 WORDS?
Let’s imagine that you just got a job as a bartender. Would you try to learn every cocktail known to man, or would you focus on the cocktails that are most popular in your area? We developed this list of words based on the idea of the 80/20 principle (the cornerstone of results-based living). This strategy developed by David Kock that says “The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs or efforts usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs or rewards” So instead of learning 10,000 words in no particular order, learn the most common 100 words, then the most common 500 words, and then the most common 1000 words. If you want to check out this classic business book, you can order it here. You can also scroll down to start reviewing the 1000 most common words in English below.
SOME OTHER GREAT WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR VOCABULARY:
- Watch Netflix in Original language with original language captions
- Check out a great book like this: to learn more English Words
- Do some quick daily exercises on DuoLingo or any other free language learning app
- Take some classes with us at Strømmen and speak to a real human in person or online
- Use our list of 1000 most common words in English below. If you don’t know a word you can use google translate to see the meaning.
OUR LIST OF THE 1000 MOST COMMON WORDS IN ENGLISH BELOW:
This list is provided by www.wordfrequency.info (thank you!) and is the list that is most useful for language learners. According to thir site it is “Perhaps most useful for language learners, where they probably don’t care about the separate frequency of individual word forms, e.g. decide, decides, decided. It shows the frequency (raw frequency and frequency per million words) in each of the eight main genres: blogs, other web, TV/Movies, (more formal) spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper, and academic. If you would like to further explore the data please head over to their site. We have chosen this list of 1000 most common words in English because we feel it is the best data set for those of you looking to improve your English vocabulary.
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What are the most Frequently Used Words in English? Based on the evidence of the billion-word Oxford English Corpus, it is possible to identify the hundred commonest English words found in writing around the world. These are listed below. 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. These are known as Function Words. It could be said that the more interesting facts about word frequency are to be found a little further down the list and we explore this below. Interestingly, the analysis reveals that the vast majority of the words we use most frequently are from Old English: the basic elements of nearly any sentence that any of us utters were in place before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.The Most Frequently Used Words are: 1. The Nouns: The commonest nouns are time, person and year followed by way and day (month is 40th). The majority of the top 25 nouns (15) are from Old English and of the remainder most came into medieval English from Old French and before that from Latin. The exception is group (French from Italian) which did not appear until the 17th century. Notice that many of these words are very common because they have more than one meaning: way and part, for example, are listed in this dictionary as having 18 and 16 different meanings respectively. Another reason for a word’s high position on the list is that it forms part of many common phrases: For Example: Most of the frequency of time comes from adverbial phrases like on time, in time, last time, next time, this time, etc. The Most Frequently Used Words ( NOUNS ) are: 1 Time A look at some pairs or groups of words makes interesting reading: • man is 7th, whereas child is 12th and woman 14th Verbs: 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 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? 1 Good 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. The Oxford English Corpus is a collection of real twenty-first century English and is a major part of the Oxford Language Research Programme. Its research findings are used to write and revise Oxford dictionaries, including the latest revised edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Frequently Used Nouns Most Frequently Viewed Questions:
• What are the Longest Words in the dictionary? Frequently Asked Questions IndexFrom Frequently Used Words to HOME PAGE |
Learn how to improve your English vocabulary, listening, and speaking at the same time using the 3000 most commonly used words in English.
Fortunately, you don’t have to learn them all to become fluent in English. Americans use around 2500 – 3000 of the most common words in their daily lives. If you know these 3000 most common words, you can understand at least 95% of all conversations, e-mails, newspapers, and books.
Sounds great! But what is the most effective way to learn these words?
Focus on example sentences when learning vocabulary. Here’s why?
When it comes to learning English vocabulary, the most important thing
you need to focus on are
example sentences because they help you to improve all your English skills — including vocabulary, listening, speaking, and writing.
If you want to speak English fluently, learn with your ears, not with your eyes
Learning English can be broken down into two parts: input and output. Input consists of reading and listening while output consists of writing and speaking. The more input you get, the more output you can produce. It’s that simple.
Here’s the little secret you probably don’t know yet:
Repetition is the secret to English fluency
If you want to quickly achieve fluency level — to speak English easily, fluently and automatically, you’ll need to do one more thing:
Learn deeply through lots of repetition.
It means that you will need to listen to every example sentence many, many times, until you MASTER it. Don’t listen just one time or a few times. It’s not enough. You will forget it very soon.
You may know how to use a word to make a correct sentence, but here’s the thing: Can you use it quickly, easily, and automatically?
If the answer is no, you need to repeat more. You must listen to that example sentence again and again.
Don’t ignore this simple secret. This is how you will achieve automatically fast speaking.
FREE English Lessons — 3000 Most Frequently Used Words in English
In the following section, you will find around 3000 free lessons for the 3000 most commonly used words in English. Each lesson consists of the definition (meaning) of the word, the audio pronunciation, and many example sentences with high-quality audio.
Listen to (and repeat) each lesson many times — and watch how fast your English speaking improves!
Enjoy the lessons!
P/S: Check out the Resources page for our recommended courses and lessons.
The words we’ve compiled here probably look familiar: they are the 100 most frequently written words in the English language. Many of the most frequently used words in English are important, fundamental parts of speech like articles, conjunctions, and prepositions.
If those terms sound like gobbledygook to you, or you haven’t heard them since third grade English class, we understand. So we’re going to give you a rundown of these frequently-used words and break down their parts of speech along the way. As an added bonus, we have some helpful suggestions for more interesting synonyms (or words with similar meanings) that you might want to try instead.
Note: this list doesn’t include multiple forms of the same word. For example, we have only included do, not does, doing, and did. Also, each of these words may have multiple meanings. We have listed them here by their most common part of speech. For example, the word this can be a pronoun, adjective, or adverb, depending on the context, but we have it listed under pronoun because that’s one of its most common uses.
Ready? Let’s go!
Most-used articles
An article denotes whether a noun is specific or unspecific. There are three articles in English, and they are some of the most frequently used words:
- the
- a
- an
Most-used verbs
A verb is a word that describes an action, state, or a relation between two things.
To be or not to be?
The verb to be and its various forms (is, am, were, etc.) is used constantly in writing and speech. It’s an important verb, to be sure (we just used it again), but be mindful of how often it pops up in your writing. Try substituting one of these alternatives:
- continue
- hold
- remain
- occur
- transpire
Helper (auxiliary) verbs
These overused verbs are used to create verb forms that indicate time or mood and are not usually found on their own.
- may
- can
- will
Action verbs
These frequently used verbs describe movements and actions. And these verbs, like to be, have a tendency to get overused. When you’re writing, instead of repeating these same verbs, mix it up with some of the synonyms we have suggested after each below:
- do: accomplish, prepare, resolve, work out
- say: suggest, disclose, answer
- go: continue, move, lead
- get: bring, attain, catch, become
- make: create, cause, prepare, invest
- know: understand, appreciate, experience, identify
- think: contemplate, remember, judge, consider
- take: accept, steal, buy, endure
- see: detect, comprehend, scan
- come: happen, appear, extend, occur
- want: choose, prefer, require, wish
- look: glance, notice, peer, read
- use: accept, apply, handle, work
- find: detect, discover, notice, uncover
- give: grant, award, issue
- tell: confess, explain, inform, reveal
Most-used adverbs
An adverb is a word that modifies verbs, clauses, adjectives, and other adverbs. For example, in the sentence I drove quickly, the word quickly is an adverb modifying the verb drove. The most common adverbs are:
- when
- now
- how
- also
- not
- as
- up
- here
- there
- so
- very
Instead of these typical adverbs, why not choose some of these more colorful alternatives?
- immediately
- initially
- additionally
- nearby
- extremely
- greatly
Most-used nouns
A noun is a word that describes a person, place, or thing. There are surprisingly few nouns in the top 100 most frequently written words in the English language. However, the nouns we do use most describe things that are fundamental:
- time
- year
- people
- day
- man
- thing
- woman
- work
- child
- life
- world
- way
- back
The thing about “thing”…
One of the most common nouns is thing. When you’re writing, you should try to avoid this word as much as possible! Nine times out of 10, thing can be replaced with a more accurate and precise description. For instance, instead of writing “We weren’t able to find the thing,” write, “We weren’t able to find the million-dollar treasure.” It is more clear, interesting, and compelling.
Most-used pronouns
A pronoun is a word that replaces a noun. We use pronouns to avoid repeating the same nouns.
- I
- you
- your
- he
- she
- them
- their
- her
- him
- me
- my
- it
- its
- our
- these
- this
- that
- those
- who
- what
- which
Most-used adjectives
An adjective is a word that modifies, or describes, a noun or pronoun.
Is “good” really good enough?
One of the most frequently used adjectives is good. We think good is, well, not that good of a word. It’s boring! Instead of this common word, try one of these more illustrative synonyms next time:
- acceptable
- competent
- satisfying
- efficient
- adept
- honest
- sound
Other frequently used adjectives are not as easily replaced. Makes sense why they are used all the time then, right?
- all
- just
- even
- first
- many
- one
- two
- some
- like
- other
- more
- new
- any
- down
Most-used conjunctions
A conjunction is a word that links words, phrases, clauses, or sentences. These little words do important work, which helps explain why we rely on them so much.
Here are the most-used conjunctions:
- and
- or
- if
- because
- but
- than
Most-used prepositions
A preposition is a word that links one phrase to a phrase that is modifying or describing, it. Often it is used to describe the spatial or temporal relationships between things: in The book is on the table, the preposition on describes where the book is.
Here are some common prepositions:
- of
- in
- to
- for
- with
- on
- by
- out
- into
- about
There are around 150 prepositions or prepositional phrases in the English language. And many of them don’t get much use. Some prepositions you might want to try to spice up your writing are:
- atop
- astride
- notwithstanding
- vis-à-vis
- pursuant to
- based on
- by virtue of
When writing, keep this list in mind. Some words you can’t necessarily avoid—like prepositions and conjunctions—but, when it comes to verbs or adjectives, try to think outside of the box and pick words that might not get their time in the spotlight.
It will make your work more interesting to read—and build your vocabulary, too!
When you hear somebody asking about the most commonly used words (be those nouns or articles) you tend to firstly think it over but then it appears quite a vague issue. How can we know that? Is there a person who analyzes all the literary heritage and our everyday conversations and then counts all English words? Otherwise, it is impossible to tell for sure how often we use this or that word, isn’t it? Actually, it is possible and we shall discuss here what the language corpus is and how interesting it may be.
Let us start with a piece of lexicological statistics. If you haven’t known, according to Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.), the English language possesses:
- 171,476 words in current use
- 47,156 obsolete words
- 9,500 derivatives
Over a half of them are nouns, about a quarter go to adjectives and verbs take about a seventh. The rest is made up of interjections, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. But when we count all compounds (age + less = ageless), inflected forms (like running and runs), blendings (gigantic + enormous = ginormous), clipped words (gymnasium – gym), and slang words, we get 1,025,109.8 words as Global Language Monitor reports. Besides, Shakespeare himself invented over 1,700 words, so you can also try. As you see, you still have a lot to learn. But don’t worry, to speak English fluently and understand others, you need about only 2,000 of them.
All those words are found in the collection of “world texts” accessed via the internet containing the authentic spoken and written language that altogether make a corpus. The latter, therefore, is a systematic and computerized collection of the naturally occurred language samples used for linguistic analysis.
The analysis itself deals with the frequency of the phenomenon under investigation and, of course, is performed with special computer software. But okay, how exactly does it work?
Global Language Monitor, which we’ve previously mentioned, is a company that analyzes and tracks language usage trends worldwide. GLM main technology is called Narrative Tracker that is based on global discourse on the Internet, print and electronic global media, blogosphere, and social media sources. It provides real-time picture of the current language situation at any point in time. Although the most popular word appears to be an article “the” and there’s nothing strange about it, we offer you to take a look at the following set of words (from other parts of speech) that are the most frequent at the moment:
All these words are listed in the General Service List and its updated version (New General Service List) that gathers approximately 2,000 of the most “popular” words. Top 5 of them are easy to memorize: the, be, of, a, to. The complete list you may found here.
Did you know that the average person uses only 2000-5000 words on a daily basis? One of the most important tools I use as an English, ESL & Literacy teacher is a most frequently-used-words list.
Vocabulary Notebook, by Streetfly JZ on Flickr.com
It is possible to make countless vocabulary exercises & games from the crucial 2000 most frequently used words, and they are also the key words for learning the long and short vowels & spelling rules, for children grades 2-6, but also for adult English speakers that suffer from lower levels of literacy (80% of Canadians score 3 or lower out of 5 on the literacy scale, see here).
Advanced Reading Power, a very handy book by Pearson Longman, says the following about the most frequent words in English:
Advances in computer technology have made it possible for researchers to analyze thousands of English-language texts containing millions of words. From this research they have learned that a small percentage of words—about 2,000—are used much more frequently than all the other words. In fact, these 2,000 most frequent words account for almost 80 percent of most texts. If you know these words, you have a much better chance of understanding what you read.
Free Printable List of the 1000 Most Frequent Words
I created my own printable list of the 1000 most frequently used words and it is free to download. Copy and distribute as many as you like. This list is adapted from Lextutor’s Famous Frequency Word Lists page (beware, Lextutor is a very confusing, horrible-to-navigate website).
Example of a Word Family
Another list that I find invaluable is the list of the 2000 most frequent words AND their word family. Here is an example of a word family of one of the 2000 most frequently used words:
COMPARE COMPARABLE COMPARED COMPARES COMPARATIVE COMPARISON COMPARING COMPARATIVELY
I use these word families to teach another basic literacy skill, which is being able to identify the function of a word by its suffix. For example, –able and –ive are suffixes that denote an adjective. Suffixes mainly affect the function of the word, whereas prefixes affect the meaning.
Interesting Links
- Worldwidewords.com has a discussion about the amount of words that the average English speaker uses.
- Vocabulary.com has an interactive dictionary with lots of lessons that are also veryvaluable.
- Twitter is an excellent source for learning vocabulary. I give my students 10 words per day that they need to look up on twitter (you don’t need to be registered to use the search function) and it gives them an idea of the word in actual use by native English speakers all over the world.
English ESL Literacy Reading vocabulary
На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать грубую лексику.
На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать разговорную лексику.
Certain words of frequent use are gradually abbreviated.
Некоторые слова из-за частого употребления постепенно стали подвергаться сокращениям.
Другие результаты
The 250 most frequent words of a language are those without which you cannot construct any sentence.
250 слов составляют ядро, основу языка, то есть это те слова, без которых невозможно построить ни одно предложение.
The qualifying words of a frequent phrase may be omitted: sale comes to be used for cut-price sale, propose for propose marriage, be expecting for be expecting a baby, media for mass media.
Слова из часто употребительных фраз, иногда опускаются: просто «sale» используется для обозначения «cut-price sale», «propose» для «propose marriage», «beexpecting» для «be expecting a baby», «media» для «mass media».
The manifestations of the great red dragon are resistance to Me, lack of understanding and comprehension of the meanings of My words, frequent persecution of Me, and seeking to use schemes to interrupt My management.
Проявления большого красного дракона означают противление Мне, недостаток понимания и осознания значения Моих слов, многократные преследования Меня и стремление применить интриги, чтобы помешать Моему управлению.
And then I met polyglots who always start by imitating sounds of the language, and others who always learn the 500 most frequent words of the language, and yet others who always start by reading about the grammar.
Лидия встретила и других полиглотов, которые начинают изучение с подражания звукам языка, и тех, которые учат 500 самых распространенных слов языка, и еще тех, кто всегда начинает с изучения грамматики.
Occasionally search for words Frequent word-finding pauses, substitutions
Someone is trying to catch you with words about frequent optimization.
Кто-то пытается зацепить словами о частой оптимизации.
Oregon even has a word for them: frequent fliers.
In other words, frequent gamers have more brain power to devote to determination, motivation, and optimism than non-gamers.
Другими словами, геймеры имеют больше мозговой мощи, которую они могут направить на целенаправленность, мотивацию и оптимизм, чем не-геймеры.
«No» is the most frequent word they use
«Нет» — это самое частое слово, которое они используют
For such languages you should take into consideration that a rare form even of a very frequent word may have a low frequency rating.
Для таких языков Вам нужно учитывать, что редкая форма даже довольно часто встречающегося слова может иметь низкий рейтинг частотности.
The most frequent word in the address was «economy»; the president used it 51 times.
For example, integer «2» encodes the second most frequent word in data.
Another variety also begins suddenly with frequent word and phrase repetition, and does not develop secondary stuttering behaviours.
Другая разновидность также начинается внезапно, с частыми повторениями слов и фраз, но вторичное поведение заикания не развивается.
The use of key words is also frequent.
Также важна частота использования ключевых слов.
That isn’t the word‘s most frequent usage.
Увы, это не самое частое использование слова.
Was evaluated as the most frequent words and lexical variety, sentence length, grammatical structures and other parameters.
Оценивались как самые часто встречающиеся слова, так и лексическое разнообразие, длина предложений, типичные грамматические конструкции и другие параметры.
Forgetting names and words becomes more frequent.
Then I tested the translator using the first 1,000 of the most frequent words in the Italian language.
Затем я протестировал словарь, используя первую тысячу самых часто встречающихся форм итальянских слов.
If your project name is a frequent word, it is going to be hard to find.
Например, если имя вашего проекта также является общим словом, поиск будет затруднен.
Результатов: 29335. Точных совпадений: 1. Затраченное время: 596 мс
Documents
Корпоративные решения
Спряжение
Синонимы
Корректор
Справка и о нас
Индекс слова: 1-300, 301-600, 601-900
Индекс выражения: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200
Индекс фразы: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200
The frequency number is how often the word appears out of 250,000 words. For example if you divide 250,000 by 9243, then we can see that the word «the» appears once in every 27 words. However, this number should only be used as a general guide. The numbers can change depending on the topic, demographic, and many other variables. Although the number cannot be accurate, it can be used to provide insight into the frequency of words in relation to other words.
The Type column refers to what type of word it is. In many cases, a word can be multiple types. The first one listed is more frequently used than the second. For example, the word «can» is used as an auxiliary verb such as, «I can ride a bike.» Also, it is a noun such as can of food. In this particular case, «can» is used commonly in both ways, but it is more frequently used as an auxiliary verb. In some cases, the third or fourth type might not be used regularly.
There can be typos or errors. If you find anything that is incorrect, please email talkenglish@talkenglish.com. We will do our best to correct everything.
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