Most common words in English

The list below of most common words in English cannot be definitive. It is based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus of over a billion words, and represents one study done by Oxford Online, associated with the Oxford English Dictionary.^[1] This source includes writings of all sorts from "literary novels and specialist journals to everyday newspapers and magazines and from Hansard to the language of chatrooms, emails, and weblogs",^[2] unlike some sources which use texts from only specific sources.^[3]

The Reading Teachers Book of Lists claims that the first 25 words make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and that the first 100 make up about one-half of all written material.^[4]

Note that the items listed may represent more than one actual word; they are lemmas. For instance the entry "be" contains within it the occurrences of "are", "is", "were" and "was".^[5] Note also that these top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.^[1]

Rank	Word
1	the
2	be
3	to
4	of
5	and
6	a
7	in
8	that
9	have
10	I

Rank	Word
11	it
12	for
13	not
14	on
15	with
16	he
17	as
18	you
19	do
20	at

Rank	Word
21	this
22	but
23	his
24	by
25	from
26	they
27	we
28	say
29	her
30	she

Rank	Word
31	or
32	an
33	will
34	my
35	one
36	all
37	would
38	there
39	their
40	what

Rank	Word
41	so
42	up
43	out
44	if
45	about
46	who
47	get
48	which
49	go
50	me

Rank	Word
51	when
52	make
53	can
54	like
55	time
56	no
57	just
58	him
59	know
60	take

Rank	Word
61	person
62	into
63	year
64	your
65	good
66	some
67	could
68	them
69	see
70	other

Rank	Word
71	than
72	then
73	now
74	look
75	only
76	come
77	its
78	over
79	think
80	also

Rank	Word
81	back
82	after
83	use
84	two
85	how
86	our
87	work
88	first
89	well
90	way

Rank	Word
91	even
92	new
93	want
94	because
95	any
96	these
97	give
98	day
99	most
100	us

Source: ^[1]

Parts of speech

Nouns time person year way day thing man world life hand part child eye woman place work week case point government company number group problem fact

Verbs be have do say get make go know take see come think look want give use find tell ask work seem feel try leave call

Adjectives good new first last long great little own other old right big high different small large next early young important few public bad same able

Prepositions to of in for on with at by from up about into over after

Source: ^[1]

See also

• Oxford Corpus' 100 Compared to Dolch and Fry
• A General Service List of English Words
• Basic English
• Dolch Word List
• Frequency analysis
• Frequency list
• Letter frequencies
• Most common words in Esperanto
• Number of words in English
• Oxford English Corpus
• Swadesh list
• Zipf's law

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} AskOxford.com: Language Facts. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
2. ^ AskOxford.com: The Oxford English Corpus. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
3. ^ Top 1000 words in UK English.
4. ^ The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words.
5. ^ Benjamin Zimmer. June 22, 2006. Time after time after time.... Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006.