Ice Chip #30
The English Language WordClock: 1,001,366.
English passed the 1,000,000 threshold on June 10, 2009 at 10:22 am GMT
According to the there are over one million words to choose from in the English Language!!! That gives you so many opportunities to use words to express and articulate your thoughts. If you click the link you will have the opportunity to listen to an interview where Matt Frei reports on English's unique linguistic evolution and then speaks to Global Language Monitor's, Paul Payack who helped find this millionth English word.
I was curious to see where the "(k)notty words" would show up in a study of the most common words in the English Language. According to a study done in conjunction with the Oxford English Dictionary, they developed a list of the top 100 words or "lemmas". A lemma is where one word is the "headword" for several others that are in the same family of words. For instance the entry "be" contains within it the occurrences of "is", "was", "be" and "are". In English, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, with run as the lemma. A lexeme refers to the set of all the forms that have the same meaning.
Note also that these top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus. This information comes from the entry for most common 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 | an |
| 33 | will |
| 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 | me |
| Rank | Word |
|---|---|
| 51 | when |
| 52 | make |
| 53 | can |
| 54 | like |
| 55 | time |
| 56 | no |
| 57 | just |
| 58 | him |
| 59 | know |
| 60 | take |
| Rank | Word |
|---|---|
| 61 | people |
| 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 |
The main disempowering word: "Not" is ahead of the Reframing Five: Do, Can, Will, Would, Could. (Note that "But" is 3 from pushing "Do" further down the list.
So what is the point of gathering this data and information?
- To give you the perspective that eradicating the "(k)notty words" could have a major impact on creating change in the world.
- That empowering word choice could be a significant part of your awareness for reframing your word choice.
- To make the number of words you use, decrease...because you eradicated the "(k)notty words".
Hope you enjoyed this bit of trivia, have a phenomenal week of articulation. Remember to double check your emails before you hit send. Use the reframing five.
Best regards,
Bob
P.S. If you go to the Global Language Monitor link at the top of the Ice Chip, and watch the video that automatically loads (you will have to scroll down a bit to find the video), you will hear the 1,000,000th word as well as three others that were considered. Be the first one to correctly identify all four of the words, and you will receive a signed copy of my book or Audio Book -- your choice. (I will take care of the postage).
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3 Responses to “Ice Chip #30”
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I never knew there was such a thing as a Global Language Monitor tracking — that’s facinating! And, to think, when I logged on to hear about the 1,000,000th word as of June 1st, the count is now up to 1,001,366 — wow, we are adding words really fast.
For those who didn’t get to the Global Language Monitor website to discover the 1,000,000th and next 3 words, they are: Web2.0, N00b, sexting & octomom. Weird that two of the four words have numerals in them — wonder what spell-check thinks about that?
Thanks Bob for helping us learn something new everyday!
Susie
Well BOB,
If this stats were based on me, I would totally shift them:)
In fact, since I have taken your coaching program my empowering alternatives are in the top of the list.
I CAN, I Will, You could and many more are much better options!
Thanks for sharing!!
Hélder
Thank you Susie and Helder for your comments. It is amazing to think that “Not” and its related cousins— the other “(k)notty words” are ahead of the empowering words — Do, Will, Would, Can, Could as noted above.
Think of the difference we all can make by eradicating and un-tying those
“(k)nots.
Keep up the great work!!
Bob