david zach's journal

« 'boards | Main | Tales of Future Past »

March 11, 2005

Word Count

Word count tells how often words are used in the English language. It uses some database in England and not in the US. Apparently some people believe that the English invented the language of English. Yeah, whatever.

Anyway, it's a neat interface and can reveal something of what we think about, via our use of words. I'm not sure how it is updated, or if it is updated, but if it was, I suspect it would be rather revealing of what catches our attention.

For example, here are a few words with their rankings of use compared to other words.
45651 futurist (not so popular and probably dropping by the day)
5687 historian (how many times more used is this than futurist?)
1989 tradition
272 change (seems to be a word used obsessively)
5996 continuity
4021 uncertainty
15826 visionary (can't really call this an overused term)
9547 idiot (this is an underused term in my opinion)
5901 sacred
4156 prayer
5723 sin
14925 immoral
1696 freedom
4838 innovation
765 design (I'll bet this word has climbed a lot in recent years.)
376 god (they didn't capitalize this, so I guess I won't either.)
4802 devil
4803 feminist (Don't blame me. In rank, one just followed the other!)
1036 traditional
2481 radical

And the list goes on and on and on.

Posted by dmzach

View by Category

Recent Entries