The list below of
most common words in English cannot be definitive. It 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", unlike some sources which use texts from only specific sources.