Introduction

adviser (or) to show that advisor is

included.

The list of Part I includes all words with

total of 18 or more occurrences in the four
columns, i.e., of 1 or more occurrences per
million words, except that certain rare con
tractions, proper names, foreign words, and
slang words are not entered in the list unless
they occur in at least three of the four counts.
This avoids cluttering up the list with words
of almost no importance and of questionable
frequency which happened to be used 18
times or more in some one or two sources.
Such words are Adah, which occurred 52
times, Adlerstein, which occurred 240 times,
Adrienne, which occurred 52 times, Alain,
which occurred 36 times, abs'lutely, and
a

agoin.
Generated for onur.akturk.8969@gmail.com on 2015-05-29 03:37 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015004757442
Open Access, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#oa-google

There are

1,069

AA

words occurring 100

or more times per million. There are 952

A words occurring 50 to 99 times per million.
The number of words occurring 49, 48, 47,
etc., times per million is as shown below:
49

36

37

50

25

85

13

231

48

35

36

62

24

72

12

294

47

33

35

53

23

98

11

316

46

38

34

64

22

110

10

340

45

42

33

55

21

112

441

44

38

32

65

20

131

522

43

39

31

54

19

132

593

42

30

30

74

18

145

684

41

40

29

74

17

172

890

40

45

28

77

16

188

1064

39

41

27

88

15

189

1442

38

47

26

76

14

200

2503

5209

The total number occurring once or more

per million is thus 19,440. There are 9,202
words that occurred less than once per mil
lion words but of tener than four times in 18
million words. These are listed in Part II
(pages 211 to 242). On pages 242 to 247 are
listed 1,358 words from those that occurred
four times per 18 million words, making
30,000 in all.
The spelling used for a word that has vari

ant spellings is usually that which is now

commonest in American usage, but occa
sionally, where the counts have been kept
separate for two variant spellings, these have
been entered separately.
No attempt has
been made to conform to the spelling of
one dictionary, nor are all variant spellings
listed.

The words marked AA are approximately

for frequency. The words
marked A are approximately the second
thousand.
The words marked 49 to 30 are
Those
approximately the third thousand.
marked 29 to 19 are approximately the
fourth thousand. Those marked 18 to 14 are
approximately the fifth thousand; those
marked 13 to 10 the sixth thousand; and
those marked 9 or 8 the seventh thousand,
the first thousand

bringing the total for AA down through 8

to 7,055. Those marked 7, 6, 5, or 4 bring
the total somewhat past 10,000 (to 10,285).
It is convenient for certain purposes to
have a separate list of the 500 words occur
ring most frequently and of the 500 occurring
next most frequently. Such lists are printed
in Part V.

HOW TO USE THE

LIST

The list tells anyone who wishes to know

whether to use a word in writing, speaking,
or teaching how common the word is in
standard English reading matter.
The first number, which is a summary
from all four counts, is the most important
and is usually decisive. The numbers in the
T, L, J, and S columns may, however, be of
great value in certain cases. The T counts
emphasized frequency in readers, textbooks,
the Bible, and the English classics. The L
counts included only recent and popular
The
counts included only
magazines.
books recommended for boys and girls in
grades 3 to 8. The S counts used a miscel
lany of juvenile and adult reading of old
and recent, and of matter-of-fact and im
aginative but omitted school readers and

textbooks.

The most important use of the list by a