98 Words Make Up 50% of Written English

11/05/2021
Plot of vocabulary size Vs. percentage of written English.

We analyzed an English language dataset containing 3.8 billion words and found the following:

The relationship between dictionary size (the number of most-common words) and percentage of English is plotted above. The 98 words are listed below.

Word-usage statistics have applications that range from learning a foreign language to engineering a modern rhyming dictionary. An adult's vocabulary is about 40,000 words. However, vocabulary size increases until old age. Some words are also more common than others, so most of daily-life English uses well under 40,000 words.

We assumed a total of 200,000 distinct words and we ignored casing. A similar analysis was done by Oxford Dictionaries. They used fairly different data along with slightly different methodology. Considering the differences, though, both analyses agree quite well with one another.

The 98 Most Common Words

  1. the
  2. to
  3. a
  4. i
  5. and
  6. you
  7. of
  8. it
  9. is
  10. that
  11. in
  1. for
  2. but
  3. this
  4. on
  5. have
  6. with
  7. be
  8. not
  9. are
  10. if
  11. my
  1. was
  2. they
  3. just
  4. so
  5. like
  6. as
  7. your
  8. it's
  9. or
  10. at
  11. can
  1. what
  2. do
  3. me
  4. all
  5. don't
  6. he
  7. i'm
  8. get
  9. would
  10. about
  11. from
  1. one
  2. people
  3. more
  4. out
  5. an
  6. up
  7. we
  8. no
  9. when
  10. will
  11. them
  1. there
  2. think
  3. how
  4. some
  5. because
  6. good
  7. has
  8. their
  9. time
  10. know
  11. by
  1. then
  2. also
  3. really
  4. had
  5. even
  6. only
  7. who
  8. that's
  9. his
  10. her
  11. than
  1. she
  2. much
  3. now
  4. see
  5. been
  6. other
  7. want
  8. make
  9. too
  10. you're
  11. way
  1. still
  2. any
  3. go
  4. could
  5. being
  6. him
  7. were
  8. why
  9. well
  10. got