Most common words in English - wikipedia Most common words in English Studies that estimate and ran the most common words in English examine texts written in English. Perhaps the most comprehensive such analysis is one that was conducted against the Oxford English Corpus ( OEC ), a very large collection of texts from around the world that are written in the English language. A text corpus is a large collection of written works that are organised in a way that makes such analysis easier. In total, the texts in the Oxford English Corpus contain more than 2 billion words. 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. 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. According to a study cited by Robert McCrum in The Story of English, all of the first hundred of the most common words in English are of Anglo - Saxon origin. Some lists of common words distinguish between word forms, while others rank all forms of a word as a single lexeme ( the form of the word as it would appear in a dictionary ). For example, the lexeme be ( as in to be ) comprises all its conjugations ( is, was, are, were, etc. ), and contractions of those conjugations. Note also that these top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50 % of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus. Contents 1 100 most common words 1.1 Parts of speech 1.1. 1 Nouns 1.1. 2 Verbs 1.1. 3 Adjectives 1.1. 4 Prepositions 1.1. 5 Others 2 See also 2.1 Word lists 3 References 4 External links 100 most common words Based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus ( a large collection of texts in the English language ), the 100 words that occur most frequently in written English are : Word Parts of speech OEC rank BC rank Dolch level Fry 's Sight Words the Article Pre-primer be Verb Primer to Preposition Pre-primer of Preposition Grade 1 and Conjunction Pre-primer Article 6 Pre-primer in Preposition 7 Pre-primer that Conjunction et al. 8 Primer have Verb 9 Primer Pronoun 10 Pre-primer it Pronoun 11 Pre-primer for Preposition 12 Pre-primer not Adverb et al. 13 Pre-primer on Preposition 14 Primer with Preposition 15 Primer he Pronoun 16 Primer as Adverb, conjunction, et al. 17 Grade 1 you Pronoun 18 Pre-primer do Verb, noun 19 Primer at Preposition 20 Primer this Determiner, adverb, noun 21 Primer but Preposition, adverb, conjunction 22 Primer his Possessive pronoun 23 Grade 1 by Preposition 24 Grade 1 from Preposition 25 Grade 1 they Pronoun 26 Primer we Pronoun 27 Pre-primer say Verb et al. 28 Primer her Possessive pronoun 29 Grade 1 she Pronoun 30 Primer or Conjunction 31 Grade 2 an Article 32 Grade 1 will Verb, noun 33 Primer my Possessive pronoun 34 Pre-primer one Noun, adjective, et al. 35 Pre-primer all Adjective 36 Primer would Verb 37 Grade 2 there Adverb, pronoun, et al. 38 their Possessive pronoun 39 Grade 2 what Pronoun, adverb, et al. 40 Primer so Conjuntion, adverb, et al. 41 Primer up Adverb, preposition, et al. 42 Pre-primer out Preposition 43 Primer if Conjunction 44 Grade 3 about Preposition, adverb, et al. 45 Grade 3 who Pronoun, noun 46 Primer get Verb 47 Primer which 48 Grade 2 go Verb, noun 49 Pre-primer me Pronoun 50 Pre-primer when 51 Grade 1 make Verb, noun 52 can 53 like 54 time 55 no 56 just Adjective 57 him Pronoun 58 know Verb, noun 59 take Verb, noun 60 people Noun 61 into 62 year Noun 63 your Possessive pronoun 64 good Adjective 65 some 66 could Verb 67 them 68 see Verb 69 other 70 than 71 then 72 now 73 look Verb 74 only 75 come Verb 76 its Possessive pronoun 77 over Preposition 78 think 79 also 80 back 81 after Preposition 82 use Verb, noun 83 two 84 how 85 our Posessive pronoun 86 work Verb, noun 87 first 88 well Adverb 89 way 90 even 91 new Adjective et al. 92 want 93 because 94 any 95 these 96 give Verb 97 day 98 most 99 us Pronoun 100 Parts of speech The following is the same list subdivided by part of speech. The list labeled `` Others '' includes pronouns, possessives, articles, modal verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions. 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 Others the and that it not he as you this but his they her she or an will my one all would there 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 Word lists by frequency References ^ Jump up to : `` 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. Jump up ^ `` The Oxford English Corpus ''. AskOxford.com. Retrieved June 22, 2006. Jump up ^ The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words. Jump up ^ Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue : English and How It Got That Way, Harper Perennial, 2001, page 58 Jump up ^ Benjamin Zimmer. June 22, 2006. Time after time after time... Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006. External links Look up frequency lists in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Most_common_words_in_English&oldid=797547520 '' Categories : Lists of English words Hidden categories : Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages Talk Article Talk View source Contents About Wikipedia עברית Simple English 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 27 August 2017, at 19 : 34. 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Question: what is the most said word in the english language
Answer: the