Tracking The (English) Words We Use

Zugok writes "Wordcount.org has an interactive presentation of the 86,800 most frequently used English words. In addition they have Query Count which is a dynamic database of what are the most queried words on Wword Count. Then there is the conspiracy corner where certain words seems to end up in some sort of eerie order. Cowboy comes 14834 and Neal comes 18928. Bebop comes 70673."

another word

[mrpuffypants]

fuck is number 5598

Actually, I expected this to be higher since I watched Goodfellas last night.

Re:another word

[Rosyna]

Bite: 5922
My: 69
Shiny: 8590
Daffodil: 27591
Ass: 15036

I am actually quite disappointed that this wasn't from the bite-my-shiny-daffodil-ass dept. Tsk, tsk. Hemos.

Re:another word

[Hinhule]

I think it just went up quite a bit since the hosts realized their servers had been slashdotted.

Nice flash

[bizpile]

That has to be the coolest use of Flash I have ever seen that wasn't simply an animation. I guess I won't adblock it.

Re:Nice flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it is one of the most annoying interfaces I've used. There's no way to know what you're suppose to click on, and there's limited space that displays like 3 words at a time in a giant font. I would prefer to see even the most rudimentary HTML so I could scroll through a list of 100's or 1000's of words at a time.

Re:Nice flash

[rdc_uk]

Pretty,
but possibly the most useless UI for list-format data ever; I can only read the first (counts) 19 entries, (can't read the numbers after 10). After that you have to do random sampling.

Browsable Lists - the past and future of basic data presentation!

Cool idea

[wombatmobile]

That has to be the coolest use of Flash

It is a cool idea and it has been implemented with Flash.

I'd like to see it implemented without Flash. What is cool would then be more accessible and available faster. That would be more compelling.

Re:Nice flash

[julesh]

Yeah, very cool.

"A script in this movie is causing Macromedia Flash Player 6 to run slowly. If it continues to run your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort this script?"

gee..

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

Hm...I would have thought things like "the", "and" or "or" would have beat out "dog" "pussy" "sex".

Re:gee..

[drunkennewfiemidget]

You're grossly over-estimating the general public. ;)

Re:gee..

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

Yeah...apparently I was looking at the wrong thing anyways. It was only with the query count that I saw this, but it's still amusing.

Love Hate

[richardoz]

At least love @384 ranks above hate @3107

I think the world isn't so bad...

Re:Love Hate

[bizpile]

At least love @384 ranks above hate @3107

But war(304) beats peace(1155).

Re:Love Hate

[KRYnosemg33]

Sure, but what you fail to realize is that the word is most often used in the following cases:
"I love Britney Spears"
"I love M. Jackson"
"I loved Gigli"
"I love [insert political candidate] because of [insert extremely dumbass reason]"

You realize the world isn't the poetic and romantic place you think it is.

Re:Love Hate

[Lemmy Caution]

"I loved Gigli"

I suspect that yours is the first use of this phrase, ever.

Re:Love Hate

[gl4ss]

it's just overused in english, so overused that "i love *" has barely any meaning above "at just this second i quite like..".

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Love Hate (and Mom)

[bheerssen]

In the immortal words of the Butthole Surfers:

"This here a song, is about John W Smoke Junior
It's about bein' in love and lovin' the love that's hatin' the love
the love and the love and the hate that's lovin with all
It's around the love that's hate that's the hate that's the love
And the love is the love that is the hate that's hatin' the love,
it's lovin' the hate
It's about John W Smoke's mom, it's with his mom
it's about his mom it's about his mom it's about lovin his mom
and bein' without hi

NSFW!

[welshwaterloo]

In case anyone's curious at work - don't click the link to see what other people are searching for.

I mean, I guess I should've known, but I didn't expect the font size to be so damned *large*!

(Not, of course that anyone would waste work time by reading /.)

Re:NSFW!

[Cederic]

Hmm. Thing is, there's pretty few words likely to appear high on the search list that I don't use verbally every day anyway.

Unless lots of people are searching for 'theocratic'. I don't use that one much.

~Cederic

You know this world is in trouble

[Lispy]

when the word "money" makes place 227 while "love" is at 384. Or maybe I am just turning into some sort of postmodern hippie. ;-)

Re:You know this world is in trouble

[ceeam]

I love money.

Re:You know this world is in trouble

[PMuse]

It takes somewhat of a long time to get past all the pronouns, articles, prepositions, to-be verbs, etc. Once we do, we can start to see what things people are talking about.

people (81)

first (86)

down (97)

think (102)

work (103)

years (106), year (122)

right (112)

government (140)

day (141)

man (142)

world (149)

...and it was at that point that the slashdot effect killed the flash app

no flash, please

[latroM]

This is so bad. No one should make their information to depend on non-free software. I will not install flash to see this.

86,800 most frequently used English words???

[ceeam]

Bloody hell, I wonder what other words are _not_ so frequently used then.

Re:86,800 most frequently used English words???

[WIAKywbfatw]

Not "Wword", I guess.

How ironic is that a story submission about language and word usage, featuring a website called WordCount.org can't even get the word "word" spelt correctly in the story summary?

Re:86,800 most frequently used English words???

[ray-auch]

type of wheat / flour.

can't see why it's relevant in the context of the grandparent post though...

Re:86,800 most frequently used English words???

[WIAKywbfatw]

Spelt?

How the English and most of the English-speaking word spell the word that Americans insist on spelling "spelled".

Re:86,800 most frequently used English words???

[shadowcabbit]

Gigarectum is one that's probably not so frequently used. Same goes for Xenomorph, flagellate, moribund, logorrhea, sialoquent, genetrix, and bolection.

(Most of these I got from here: http://phrontistery.50megs.com/ihlstart.html [50megs.com])

Re:86,800 most frequently used English words???

[mrmagos]

Well, considering that is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/10th of the words estimated to be in the English language, there are quite a few not in the list. The actual [languagemonitor.com] number [hypertextbook.com] varies [wordorigins.org] by source however, estimated between approximately 800,000 and 1,000,000 words.

Re:86,800 most frequently used English words???

[burns210]

Shakespeare was said to only user about 30,000 words in all of his works... The average human, in his lifetime, uses far fewer.

floccinaucinihilipilification

[the_twisted_pair]

..means 'the act of estimating as worthless.'

-To you and me, it means calling something shit.

(teehee. finally found a way to post that one)

Re:86,800 most frequently used English words???

[jonadab]

> I wonder what other words are _not_ so frequently used then.

Use Google, and try to get the lowest number you can get for the number of
pages. Yes, this is a variant on GoogleWhacking, but with only one word.

Some quick attempts: Google finds 76,500 pages using 'rotund' (round),
31,000 for 'pneumatology' (the study of the [sS]pirit), 13,900 for 'cromulent'
(valid), 818 for 'pimola' (a stuffed olive), 242 for 'anatopism' (something
that is out of place), and only 31 for 'propretonic' (preceding the syllab

Linux is currently not in the archive...

[Lispy]

but Windows ranks at a disturbing 1169. ;-)

Well duh.

[Yaztromo]

The archive bills itself as "...an interactive presentation of the 86,800 most frequently used English words."

Last I checked, "Linux" is not a word in the english language.

For the same reason, you're not going to find "Slashdot", "jSyncManager", or "iPod", regardless of how many times they're used online.

Yaz.

Re:Linux is currently not in the archive...

[Lispy]

Noticed that smiling face at the end of my post?? You know, this means that I might be kidding.

True but...

[Savage-Rabbit]

.. 'Microsoft' is at a disturbing 4304 which puts this word ahead of 'Fuck' at 5589!

This means that either:

1) That people at large think more about Microsoft than copulating. (Unlikely)

2) They used a bunch of /. readers as a basis for working out their word collection.

Flash!?

[avalys]

It would be nice if the list were available in plaintext form, instead of this slow and miserable Flash presentation.

This is a prime example of Flash being misused. It's not needed at all, and only serves to slow things down. It also makes it impossible to use the data for anything useful.

Re:Flash!?

[FinestLittleSpace]

I agree that there should be a simple listing of it (although any half-decent programmer could try packet catching and watch what it requests.. its probably very easy to make a bespoke script to go get the data)....

BUT.. the flash implementation is very clear, easy to use and a good bit of coding. So Ner.

Re:Flash!?

[julesh]

BUT.. the flash implementation is very clear, easy to use and a good bit of coding. So Ner.

Sorry, according to the copy I've just downloaded, there are NaN words in the archive, and the word I've just clicked on (""), is at position NaN.

I wouldn't say it was exactly the greatest coding in the world.

Re:Flash!?

[FinestLittleSpace]

I noticed that too, and I've now decided that I could code better actionscript than that with one arm behind my back & my eyes covered with a blindfold :-).

Re:Flash!?

[Angostura]

It's ART goddamit. It's not meant to be FUNCTIONAL :-)

words we DO NOT use

[theMerovingian]

1) que
2) centre
3) colour
4) dialogue
5) program
6) pyjamas

Why yes, I am american :)

Re:words we DO NOT use

[TwistedSquare]

que?

Re:words we DO NOT use

[bheerssen]

You misspelled programme ;)

Re:words we DO NOT use

[iantri]

What do Americans have against pyjamas?

IAC(Canadian).

History of the English language

[siskbc]

If it helps, think of American English as a foreign language. You wouldn't call someone in Spain on the phone and insist on speaking English, would you? Similarly, when calling an American, it would serve you well to make accomodations for their knowledge of your language, particularly if you expect that you are more knowledgeable of American English than the person to whom you are speaking is of UK English.

Also, it's not as if you are "correct" and the American "incorrect." Languages are fluid. Languages evolve, including English. Brits (I include Canadians here, having severed ties only quite recently) have really screwed up the proper German you were taught ~1500 years ago too. And the Norwegian you were taught ~1200 years ago. And the French you were taught 968 years ago. As such, would you consider the entire English language "incorrect?" Many words had various spellings in the 1600s when English was brought to America. As such, it's not accurate to claim that the American spelling is incorrect, when we simply chose one of the accepted spellings at the time and the Brits chose the other. It might be different if the English language had an established spelling for a certain word by 1500 and Americans changed, but this is not the case. For all the pedantic spelling and grammar correction, many Brits (and Canadians) seem to be ignorant of the history of their own language.

One might also suggest that you not engage in such displays of self-superiority - "When in Rome..." one might say. You seem to share the attitude of tourists in foreign lands who expect to have waiters (for example) speak their own native language and become irate when the waiter can't or won't. Admittedly, Americans are one of the major contributors to the image of the self-righteous tourist, and I find that disgusting too. Ultimately, one can adapt to your host nation - even if it's simply over the phone - or one can maintain self-righteousness and deal with the inevitable inaccuracies. What does one gain from this exchange, anyway?

As for the Americans in Canada you cite, their mistakes are borne of ignorance rather than self-righteousness. The difference borne of ignorance is correctable. I would politely, without condescencion, inform them that the letter they refer to as "zee" is called "zed" by the rest of the English speaking world. If they insist on maintaining their behavior, then your ire would be well-placed - if you didn't insist on doing the same, that is.

All in all, there's really no need for this "whose language is correct" debate. Language is a tool. If you can effectively with the other party, you have no problem. Your problem is you intentionally choose not to simply due to ego, which I find baffling.

Compression

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

I know there are already types of compression that take the most common letters of a document, and then builds a binary dictionary off of it, to create the most efficient way of storing the data. Perhaps this database could be used, as a static dictionary, and compressing documents could be even better, though the db queries might slow it down.

I think Edward Tufte ...

[YetAnotherName]

... you know, the information visualization/presentation guy [edwardtufte.com], might like their display.

Huh?

[brianjcain]

"Grok is not currently in the archive"

Does anyone know...

[Suit_N_Tie]

what the ranking is for the word /.?

Reminds me of flaming logos

[QuietLagoon]

Nice concept for a web site, but the gratuitous use of technology gets in the way.

"Wword"?

[Speare]

In addition they have Query Count which is a dynamic database of what are the most queried words on Wword Count.

So, how often do people look up the word, 'Wword'?

I wonder what rank

[jayhawk88]

"Slashdot" and "effect" are located at?

hmmm...

[jpellino]

we're driven:
"work" is #103
"play" is #443

and imaginative: "what if" (45&46)

77-81 seem to portend humanoids or clones "may these new also people"

where are....

[bob_herzog]

...teh, noob, and haxor... I have trouble believing they aren't ranked heheh

Word flashmobs

[G4from128k]

Perhaps sites like this will encourage the creation of word flashmobs. A group of people would conspire to overuse some obscure word to boost its rating. Bombing the word within blogs, web pages, and postings might help the word spread into wider use and rise in the rankings. It could even be a competitive sport -- two teams pick two words of adjacent rank and the team whose word rises the most wins.

Re:Word flashmobs

[WormholeFiend]

Fark does this with surveys.

The last one I remember involved a survey on letting a bunch of cows loose in Edmonton streets as part of a "run with the bulls" type of event.

Re:Word flashmobs

[pipingguy]

What a craptacular idea!

Re:Word flashmobs

[burns210]

You want to Google Bomb a dictionary?

Nigritude Ultramarine

[emilng]

Already been done [darkblue.com]

I wonder

[WormholeFiend]

when the words "to slashdot", "slashdotting", and "slashbot will be included in the English dictionaries...

How about we post a front-page story to Merriam-Webster's [m-w.com] and Oxford's [oed.com]?

Found one for the conspiracy corner.

[Chess_the_cat]

Troll: discarding coexistence.

Words 29350-29352.

About 40,000?

[levell]

It seems there's a little over 40,000 words (excluding proper nouns etc.) in use in the sample text (whole english-written web?). I'm making that estimate based on the completely unscientific observation that after that point, most of the words seem to be place names etc.

I know there are proper nouns before that point, but they're presumably balanced by the non-proper noun words after that point.

Re:About 40,000?

[levell]

To correct myself (didn't notice the link in the bottom right) the sample isn't the web but the British National Corpus, a collection of writing from different sources. Which explains why Slashot and Firefox aren't high in the list and why colour (867) is much higher than color (27077). It would be interesting to compare to a web sampled version, which they are planning for the future.

Did their sources include AIM and ICQ?

[Mordaximus]

I half expected this wordcount thing to, well, count real English words. OMG ranks at 43712.

P.S. WTF Did not rank :/

Re:Did their sources include AIM and ICQ?

[The Unabageler]

wtf mate?!?!

Computer

[southpolesammy]

Computer is #705, immediately followed by security at #706....

"Yes, Alex, I'll take 'Curious Coincidences' for $200."

I need this for German.

[torpor]

I have to learn German. I need the 86,000 most-commonly used German words. This would give me a nice target of words to get to know in the process of learning it ...

Re: I need this for German.

[doodlelogic]

Leo: http://dict.leo.org/ [leo.org] is your friend!

Get a pocket dictionary

[sczimme]

Langenscheidt, Oxford-Duden, and Berlitz (among others) publish small paperback Deutsche Worterbucher. The Langenscheidt version on Amazon.com is described as containing "55,000 references" while the Oxford-Duden has around 70,000 entries.

I was an exchange student in Germany *mumble* years ago and the Langenscheidt dictionary was extremely useful.

/likes typing 'Langenscheidt'

CoS

[lovebyte]

1941-1945:
faith establish facts requires membership

Tom Cruise hacked their website!

is it just me...

[FinestLittleSpace]

..or has someone hacked the query count part?

Something wrong?

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

There must be something wrong with this.

Book comes in at 357, Television comes in at 1022 and TV comes in at 1577.

Ah, now I know what's wrong with it... It's "Artistic" so it doesn't have to mean anything. I mean, nobody would find it useful if the number of occurrences of a word was given.

Here's the bit that would make you choke on your cornflakes...

WordCount recently won

AIGA [aiga.com]'s (American Institute of Graphic Arts) 2003 Award [comcontent.cfm] for Information Design.

Tell me, what was the award trophy? A chocolate tea pot?

Somewhat dishonest

[Futurepower(R)]

From the web site: "WordCount data currently comes from the British National Corpus, a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent an accurate cross-section of current English usage."

The BNC gives British English usage, not English usage. It does not reflect U.S. English usage. Britain has only 59 million [statistics.gov.uk] people. The United States has 294 million [brillig.com] people. Britain has a small percentage of the total number of English speakers.

Re:Somewhat dishonest

[Peyna]

Considering they're the BNC, it only makes sense that they would be mostly concerned with the use of English within Britian.

From the BNC themselves:

"The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written."

Actually, now that I've typed this comment, it does appear that WordCount is misrepresenting their data; the BNC is quite cle

Re:Somewhat dishonest

[Peyna]

it's = its

Cut me some slack, I had to watch da Bears beat the Packers yesterday, and as a consequence, had to stay up an extra few hours doing schoolwork.

Re:Somewhat dishonest

[Bill_Mische]

Of course most of our 59 million are actually English so perhaps you should refer to "English English"? On the other hand that would sound silly. As a suggestion why not let the English speak "English" and the residents of the US speak "American".

A more rational complaint is that the whole thing reflects the relative staid written rather than the more vibrant spoken form of English.

Re:Somewhat dishonest

[julesh]

I wouldn't say _dishonest_. To most British people (and I suspect those in English speaking nations other than the USA), "English" refers to the language we speak, and "US (or American) English" refers to the language you speak.

So, the point is that the description is written in English (as in what British people speak) so "English" in it refers to the British concept of it. If the site had been written in US English, I would understand your objection...

like is #67

[chyne]

What happened to the days when only California teenagers/surfers used 'like' for every second word. I really noticed this when I went back to university recently. It's really, like, annoying to listen to, like, the kids today, like, use the word 'like', like, five times in one, like, sentence.

Shennanigans!

[Aardpig]

... the word porn is not in the archive. I mean, how the fuck did that happen? Is this the vice that dare not speak its name?

"Ear" isn't in the archive?

[gelfling]

This shit is broken or it's so 1337 that only other geeks losers and nerds can use it.

I looked for this word...

[laejoh]

but couldn't find it, which seems appropriate

The word is

semprini

More info on Just the words (Monty Python) [ibras.dk]

NaN!

[Swedentom]

Apparently, the 'word' NaN is used a lot! :-)
NaNNaNNaNNaNNaN [lightheadsw.com]

Slashdotted?

Slow news day?

[Krafty Koder]

I submitted a story about WordCount way way back in August.

It was rejected.

"Word Count Tuesday August 03, @06:04AM Rejected "

992-995 america ensure oil opportunity
3046-3051 iraq winner, fucking smooth, nick votes

Spam filter uses?

[danharan]

To fight keyword stuffing, I believe keeping track of the word use distribution in an email would help us judge the spam potential.

Re:I have looked up all the rude words:

[gazbo]

You seem to have posted a couple of typos - I've figured out what you meant by looking up the words by rank:

Fuck = 5598
Cunt = 18636

HTH.

Re:I have looked up all the rude words:

[imsabbel]

Well, if people could write fuck, cunt, bitch, motherfucker, ect in the web without being censored by "lets be nice" moderatores, irc-bots, php-bbses,ect, their rank would be quite a bit higher.
I guess fuck should be at least in the top 1000.

Re:I have looked up all the rude words:

[kaleco]

I don't have Flash. A couple of non-php static html pages generated once a day could have handled a league table, with a PHP search.
Did the Conspiracy page report a coincidence of the words 'Fu*c' and 'Microsoft'? :)

Re:I have looked up all the rude words:

[ceeam]

Wow! Someone uses word #4304 without some form of word #5598 as an attribute? I'm amazed.

Re:Flash?

[Astrorunner]

"WordCount was designed with a minimalist aesthetic, to let the information speak for itself."

Which explains their logical use of Flash.

Re:Flash?

[alatesystems]

I really am sick of sites that require flash to get actual information. It should be part of the usability guidelines of the web that information be required to be in at least format.

Take these two sites for example. I work in the healthcare profession and we don't run our machines as administrators, and flash isn't installed default on Win2k. When you go to Ochsner's Health Plan [ohpnow.com] website, you can't do anything unless we, as administrators, log in and install flash for them from the activex control, just to log in as a provider.

Also, Houston RoadRunner [rr.com] is the exact same.

I hate flash, a lot, and It annoys me because you can't manipulate fonts, you can't use scroll wheel most of the time, all the control is taken AWAY from the user. I love flash when used for hilarious web cartoons [homestarrunner.com], but using it for content is ridiculous.

Chris

Re:Flash?

[fiannaFailMan]

I've refuted this line of 'reasoning' in my jounral. Have a look. Flash, when implemented properly, is the perfect tool for delivering content in certain applications where a lot of interaction is required. It is a lot more efficient than re-loading a whole page of HTML just for the sake of updating a few words on it. If the whole page changes, then HTML begins to have an advantage.

Please don't present an argument about technical issues based on how you 'hate' a technology. We have to examine technol

Re:I like my tin foil in the microwave please

[Stargoat]

Funny that you mention this, because they'll definitely be adding the verb "slashdotted" after today.

Encoraging

[UncleRage]

Encoraging = 0

Reassuring.

Re:Encoraging

[UncleRage]

=)

I posted before finishing my first coffee... I was definitely hoping that I didn't come across like a complete prick.

Re:Believe...

[StalinsNotDead]

God = 376

Yeah, but most of those uses were immediately followed by "damn", "damned" or "dammit"; or preceded by "Oh my".

Re:QueryCounter Abuse

[julesh]

Or slashdotters, perhaps?

Re:Are these words really English?

[julesh]

English frequently absorbs foreign words that are used as part of a phrase. For instance, my local supermarket stocks "Herbes de Provence" in their herbs section.

OTOH, I have no idea what the rest of those are about.

Re:Wordcount.org database query oneliner

[julesh]

$ GET 'http://www.wordcount.org/dbquery.php?toFind= slashdot &method=SEARCH%5FBY%5FNAME' | perl -pne 's/&/\n/g;s/=/\t/g' | less

Thank you. That's very useful, as the damned flash didn't work for me. Kept saying words were ranked 'NaN'...