Most common words in English

Studies that estimate and rank the most common words in English examine texts written in
English. Perhaps the most comprehensive such analysis is one that was conducted against the
Oxford English Corpus (OEC), a massive text corpus that is written in the English language.

In total, the texts in the Oxford English Corpus contain more than 2 billion words.[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. 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.
 OEC
Word Parts of speech COCA rank[9] Dolch level Polysemy
rank

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 Coordinator 5 3 Pre-primer 16

a Article 6 5 Pre-primer 20

in Preposition 7 6, 128, 3038 Pre-primer 23

that Subordinator, determiner 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, preposition 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

Preposition, adverb,
but 22 23, 1715 Primer 17
coordinator

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 Coordinator 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

 OEC
Word Parts of speech COCA rank[9] Dolch level Polysemy
rank

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 Coordinator, 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 Preposition 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

74, 208, 1123, 1684,

like Preposition, verb 54 Primer 26
2702

Dolch list of 95
time Noun 55 52 14
nouns

no Determiner, adverb 56 93, 699, 916, 1111, 4555 Primer 10

just Adjective 57 66, 1823 Grade 1 14

him Pronoun 58 68 Grade 1 5

know Verb, noun 59 47 Grade 1 13

take Verb, noun 60 63 Grade 1 66

people Noun 61 62 9

into Preposition 62 65 Primer 10

year Noun 63 54 7

your Possessive pronoun 64 69 Grade 2 4

good Adjective 65 110, 2280 Primer 32

some Determiner 66 60 Grade 1 10

could Verb 67 71 Grade 1 6

 OEC
Word Parts of speech COCA rank[9] Dolch level Polysemy
rank

them Pronoun 68 59 Grade 1 3

see Verb 69 67 25

other Adjective, pronoun 70 75, 715, 2355 12

than Preposition 71 73, 712 4

then Adverb 72 77 Grade 1 10

now Preposition 73 72, 1906 Primer 13

look Verb 74 85, 604 Pre-primer 17

only Adverb 75 101, 329 Grade 3 11

come Verb 76 70 Pre-primer 20

its Possessive pronoun 77 78 Grade 2 2

over Preposition 78 124, 182 Grade 1 19

think Verb 79 56 Grade 1 10

also Adverb 80 87 2

Dolch list of 95
back Noun, adverb 81 108, 323, 1877 36
nouns

after Preposition 82 120, 260 Grade 1 14

use Verb, noun 83 92, 429 Grade 2 17

two Noun 84 80 Pre-primer 6

how Adverb 85 76 Grade 1 11

our Possessive pronoun 86 79 Primer 3

work Verb, noun 87 117, 199 Grade 2 28

first Adjective 88 86, 2064 Grade 2 10

well Adverb 89 100, 644 Primer 30

Dolch list of 95
way Noun, adverb 90 84, 4090 16
nouns

even Adjective 91 107, 484 23

new Adjective et al. 92 88 Primer 18

want Verb 93 83 Primer 10

because Preposition 94 89, 509 Grade 2 7

any Pronoun 95 109, 4720 Grade 1 4

these Pronoun 96 82 Grade 2 2

give Verb 97 98 Grade 1 19

Dolch list of 95
day Noun 98 90 9
nouns

most Adverb 99 144, 187 12

 OEC
Word Parts of speech COCA rank[9] Dolch level Polysemy
rank

us Pronoun 100 113 Grade 2 6

Parts of speech

The following is a very similar list, also from the OEC, 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

Languages portal

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

New General Service List

Word lists by frequency

References

1. "The Oxford English Corpus: Facts about the language" (https://web.archive.org/web/2011122608585

9/http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/the-oec-facts-about-the-language) . OxfordDictionaries.com.
Oxford University Press. What is the commonest word?. Archived from the original (http://oxforddictio
naries.com/words/the-oec-facts-about-the-language) on December 26, 2011. Retrieved June 22,
2011.

2. "The Oxford English Corpus" (https://web.archive.org/web/20060504223239/http://www.askoxford.co

m/oec/mainpage/?view=uk) . AskOxford.com. Archived from the original (http://www.askoxford.co
m/oec/mainpage/?view=uk) on May 4, 2006. Retrieved June 22, 2006.

3. The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words (http://www.duboislc.org/EducationWatch/First10

0Words.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130616200847/http://www.duboislc.org/Ed
ucationWatch/First100Words.html) 2013-06-16 at the Wayback Machine.

4. Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, Harper Perennial, 2001, page 58

5. Benjamin Zimmer. June 22, 2006. Time after time after time... (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languag
elog/archives/003274.html) . Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
 6. Benjamin, Martin (2019). "Polysemy in top 100 Oxford English Corpus words within Wiktionary" (http://
kamu.si/polysemy_top_100) . Teach You Backwards. Retrieved December 28, 2019.

7. Garcia-Vega, M (2010). "Teasing out the meaning of "out" " (https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-013697

82) . 29th International Conference on Lexis and Grammar. Proceedings of the 29th International
Conference on Lexis and Grammar.

8. "out - English-French Dictionary" (https://www.wordreference.com/enfr/out?start=1600) .

www.wordreference.com. Retrieved November 22, 2022.

9. "Word frequency: based on 450 million word COCA corpus" (https://www.wordfrequency.info/free.as

p) . www.wordfrequency.info. Retrieved April 11, 2018.

External links

Look up frequency lists in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.