While I found this site fascinating and a fun way to waste some time, I couldn’t quite figure out how to describe it. Then I headed to their about section and found that they had already done so.
“WordCount™ is an artistic experiment in the way we use language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonness. Each word is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance. The larger the word, the more we use it. The smaller the word, the more uncommon it is.”
It’s pretty nifty, so why don’t we check it out?
Think of a word to enter. I chose “dog” and then pressed the Enter key. This may be the Return key on your keyboard. You can also click the arrow next to the blank box to start the search. Dog is ranked 1279.
You can also search by Rank. Type in a number between 1 and 86,800 and click the arrow or hit the Enter key. Now you’ll also see the words next to your chosen word by rank. These words are ranked by commonness.
That’s it in a nutshell. it’s a lot of fun to look up your favorite words. I tried correlate, smile, god, heaven, joy, work, and repugnant. I just like the way the last one sounds when you say it; it’s a favorite word of mine. Silly, I know. It’s ranked 29,720 by the way.
~ Amanda