The Most Commonly Used Adjective, Noun, Preposition, Verb & Spoken and Written English Words

Here’s a table of the most commonly used English words. The most commonly used nouns, verbs, prepositions and adjectives are included on the table. The most commonly spoken and written English words are also included.

Rank	Noun	Verb	Adjective	Preposition	Spoken	Written	Over-All
1	time	be	good	to	be	the	the
2	person	have	new	of	the	of	be
3	year	do	first	in	I	and	to
4	way	say	last	for	you	a	of
5	day	get	long	on	and	in	and
6	thing	make	great	with	it	to	a
7	man	go	little	at	have	is	in
8	world	know	own	by	a	was	that
9	life	take	other	from	not	it	have
10	hand	see	old	up	do	for	I

The list is based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus of over a billion words, and represents one study done by Oxford Online, associated with the Oxford English Dictionary. 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.

See also

• The Longest Words From Around the World
• English Words with Unique Plural Forms
• World’s Longest English Sentences and Longest English Words
• 100 Different Body Parts and Related Things with Their Corresponding Medical Terms
• World’s Longest Advertising Words and Longest Place Names