The Top 100 English Words

Are you tired of studying hard?  Do you ever wish that you could study “smarter”.  One method that will get you your most bang for your buck is to look at the highest frequency words: The Top 100 English Words.  These words are used over and over again more than any others in the English language. You will have the highest likelihood of hearing these or reading these while consuming media.

The following list is based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), which is made up of writing samples, such as literary works, novels, academic journals, newspapers, magazines, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, blogs, chat logs, and emails.  The texts in the OEC contain more than 2 billion words.  According to the analysis of the OEC, the following list comprises the 100 most frequently used English words. 

The 25 top words in this list make up 1/3 of all published material in English.  Not bad, eh?  If you know this list of the top 100 words, you will be able to understand one half of all the words published.  That last 50% of published words can be the problem.  You will find the more English vocabulary you learn, the less frequent or useful the words become.  It’s a long journey, but let’s start with the first 100 and go from there.

After reading this list, you might feel happy or relieved to realise that you already know the top 100. Of course you do.

The Top 100 English Words

Subject Pronouns

I
you
he
she
we
they
it

Object Pronouns

me
them
her
him

Possessive Pronouns

my
your
his
its
our
their

Articles

a
some
the

Conjunctions

and
because
but
if
or

Question Words

how
what
when
which
who

Nouns

Verbs

Adjectives & Adverbs

Prepositions

See the rest of the Top 500 English words. Each page introduces another 100 of the most frequently used English words. Learn them all.