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Which words are the most popular? Which words are most used online? We can find out by searching Google for every word in a dictionary – and then comparing the resulting page count for every word. Doing this, here are the 50 most popular English words. Before you take a look, can you guess which words will be on top?(Of course, the data is slightly skewed, because the approach does not take into account how often a word appears on an individual page. This can give a slight boost to words which appear often on pages, but also mostly only once, like “copyright” or “home”.)

1. the
2. of
3. and
4. to
5. a
6. in
7. for
8. on
9. home
10. is
11. by
12. all
13. this
14. with
15. about

16. or
17. at
18. from
19. are
20. us
21. site
22. information
23. you
24. contact
25. an
26. more
27. new
28. search
29. that
30. your
31. it
32. be
33. as
34. page
35. other
36. have
37. web
38. copyright
39. not

40. can
41. our
42. use
43. news
44. will
45. privacy
46. help
47. one
48. rights
49. we
50. if

And here are the least popular words from the dictionary used:

Bowdlerise, baccarra, legitimatise, clothesbasket, pauperise, muckheap, disembroil, gaolbird, hedgehop, chimneybreast,underquote, lughole, overcapitalize, acknowedgement,telephotograph, rumourmonger, undernourish, shopsoiled,
chopfallen, clarts, halfpennyworth, forrader, outmarch, ropedancer, stomachful, reafforest, mercerize, cardpunch, maulstick, fingerstall, outridden, latinise, popadum,dustsheet, winceyette, straphanging, jewelelry, palankeen,
skidlid, nasalise, heelball, coalscuttle, iodise, hipbath,counterattraction, chatey, remilitarise, chifonnier,disendow, cowheel, overcapitalise, roodscreen, salify,slenderise, macadamise, scrumcap, borshcht, velarize,transistorise, checkrail, longhop, chapelgoer, lanternslide.

So there we have the most and least popular words. But what about full sentences? We can’t find them automatically, unless we search for all word combinations – which would take forever. And because it’s impossible to automate, people created a game for this: PopSents.PopSent is short for “popular sentences.” The goal of the game, which was invented by Larry Tapper, is to create a real and meaningful sentence which returns the most results in Google (compared to other
sentences of the same word length).

For example, the sentence “I am hungry” (entered in quotes) returns 311,000 results. Not a lot when you consider how many pages Google has. So let’s try something which might yield some more results: “I was born,” which returns almost 8 million result pages – much better already.

The PopSents homepage (somethinkodd.com/popsents/) lists some of the most popular sentences found in a high-score table. Can you beat those?

3 Word Sentences
• “What’s new”
• “You don’t”
• “I don’t”
• “You will be”
• “It is not”
4 Word Sentences
• “I don’t know”
• “Click here for more”
• “This page uses frames”
• “Click here to see”
• “Do you want to”
5 Word Sentences
• “You don’t have to”
• “Click here for more information”
• “I don’t want to”
• “Tell us what you think”

6 Word Sentences
• “Your browser doesn’t support them”
• “Email this page to a friend”
7 Word Sentences
• “tell me when this page updated”
• “an error occurred while processing this directive”
• “your use of this website constitutes acceptance”
8 Word Sentences
• “Trademarks are the property of their respective owners”
• “This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer”