Most common words in English

This list of the most common words in English has been produced by Oxford University Press. By "words" is meant dictionary head words or lemmas.

It is based on an analysis of a body of over a billion words. It represents a 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",^[1] unlike some sources which use texts from only specific sources.^[2]

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.^[3]

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".^[4] Note also that these top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.^[1]

Top 100 words

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	will
33	an
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	when

Rank	Word
51	me
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

In parentheses are their position in the overall list. Some words are not listed here because they can be used as more than one part of speech. The lists show clearly that 'function' words, like prepositions and connectives, are more common than 'content' words, like nouns, and most verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Verbs like "to be" have both content and linguistic functions.

Nouns time (55) person (61) year (63) way (90) day (98) thing man world life hand part child eye woman place work week case point company number Verbs be (2) have (9) do (19) say (28) get (47) make go know take see come think look want give use find tell ask work seem feel try leave call

Adjectives good (65) first (88) new (92) last long great little own other old right big high different small large next early young important few public bad same able Prepositions to (3) of (4) in (7) for (12) on (14) with at by from up about into over after

Source: ^[1]