Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1920-08-12
OUR HARO-W0RK|NG WORDS
Those of One Syllable Most Com
monty Used, ''The" Leading All
world War Statistician Turns From
Compilation OF Figures Showing
Battle Deaths to n New Field
of Investigation
by Frederic j. Haskin.)

tlme one Is born to the day of his last
slow ride What word of all those in
the dictionary. do you suppose, he uses
the greatest number of times? Would
you like to know the word that is the
second favorite, the one that Is enunciated
third most frequently, and the one that
occupies fourth place among verbal
tools?
This unusual fact has recently been
determined. Folks use the word the
twice as often as any other. Next to
1t is and. Then follows of and to- Since
all of us are cyclists the little pronoun
is tho fifth word in use, and occurs
one-third oftener than the pronoun you.
A, in, that, for, it, was, is, will and as,
appear In order.
In eliciting the above facts the
statistician has disproven the widely
accepted theory that he is a duh and
tedious individual who may be depended
upon to select for his enumerations some
obscure and technical subject In which
the average run Of men and women are
not interested. Here Is one man Of
tables and averages who is human. He
was, during the World War, Colonel
Leonard P. Ayres, attached to the Office
Of the Chief Of Staff. He is now Mr..
Ayres. director of education for the
Russell Sage Foundation.
SAVE THESE WAR FIGURES
At the close Of the war Colonel Ayres
compiled for the War Department q
statistical summary which, showed at
a glance what had happened during those
months Of conflict. His summary showed
for instance, that the total battle deaths
In the recent war were greater than
the deaths in all wars for a hundred years
before; that Russia suffered most, de-
spite her withdrawal; that Germany lost
thfrty-two times as many men as the
United States; France % times as many
and Great Britain Is times as many. In
this war SO men in 1000 were killed
in battle in a year. while In the Civil
War 80 in 1000 were so killed, and in
the Mexican War Is in each 1000. Thus
the death rate In battle during the
World War was highest of all wars.
Colonel Ayers further reported that
during the Mexican War no In each 1000
men died Of disease, and that 65 in each
1000 men were lost from the same cause
during the Civil War. But during the
World War the loss from disease was
only 10 in each 600 men, so that the late
conflict scored a great success through
making a science Of cleanliness.
Now the man who compiled these vita
| figures has been counting the words
people use. The ten next most used words
are have, not. with, be. your. at. we, on
| he, by They are all little fellows, who
like Peter Pan, never grow up.
| Colonel Ayres. in his study Of educa-
tional problems, developed the theory
that the words in the spelling books
should be those which people use In that
most common form of writing which
appears in the letters they transcribe
Spoken words do not need to be spelled
Few people write anything other thar
business and personal letters. Would
1t be possible. he asked, to find out
what words were used in this sort o
writing, and to make sure that they
were in the spelling books?
FEW WORDS ARE USED
He went to a dozen different organi
cations which received typical letters
and got great packs of them for stats
tlcal analysis. He tabulated letters run
ming into more than 100000 word;
altogether, The surprising fact was de
veloped that but about 1900 differen
words were used In all this correspond
ence. A man with vocabulary O
1000 words could have dictated thes
letters from thousands Of people. writ
ing on hundreds Of subjects. Yet tn
child in the elementary grades studio
about 1900 words, and a desk dictionar.
; contains 5000. Many of these word
are SO rare that the average individual
. never uses them. The practical thin
would seem to be to learn the use
words first. To find out those word
was the object of this queer statistica
compilation.
Half of the bulk Of the letters write
by the people is made up of s.mpl
, list of fifty words. all of which are c
one syllable except the modest wore
any Three hundred words constitute
@ three. .~-Irths Of the space in the letter
! we write, and n thousand Of them
ninety per cent Of the work In IN
=, first 200 of most frequently used word
there are but a half-dozen Of moro tina
one syllable They ere nearly all homel
words Of AnElo-Saxon derivation. The
are such words as when. timo. some. an,
can, what, send, them. more. weel
night, their. good. shy. could. MAX
write, thing.
If you run along the list Of Colon
Ayres' words you find at the bottom
the eight columns the following Mel
i came, matter separate. tenth, push co
Germ, and the thousandth word. In the fr
! quency of it's use is wreck.
Even were the language reduced
the simplicity Of the thousand words mo-
frequently used, there are few peop
who can spell them correctly Anon
Il them, for instance. Is judgment, and
is surprising how many individuals the
,, are who profligately spend an unju
titled re" on this stout member Of tl
II dictionary family. OF the thousand re
ommend is the word most frequent
misspeled. Allege Is another of II
willing workers which often proves g
photographed stumbling block.
The word statistician wanted to 8
( exact information as TO which of h
. most used words We're hardest to spe
!. There seemed but only one way to tie
@ and that was to give them to folks
e try and record the result. Children
e school were the readiest material ava
able for conducting these experiment
q so the thousand We're sent to Sc citi
v where 10000 children furrowed the
q brows over them, did the best tn
q could. and unknowingy made a reco
in a new field of investigation.
n THE HARDEST TO SPELL
:, The words We're arranged in column
v in accordance With the difficulty
a spelling them. The three just given we
placed in the column of those harde
q to spell. The next hardest column CO
n tanned two words-decson and princlp
a The third column contained seven wor
n as follows; immediate, convenient,
n ceipt, preliminary, disappoint especial
annual. and committee. In the four
l. column were the words organizatio
D emergency, appreciate, sincerely, athlet
70 extreme, practical, proceed cordial
e character, separate, February. In t
g fifth column appeared the list of wor
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