100 most common English words

If you want to improve your English skills, the Wiktionary frequency lists are a useful resource. English uses hundreds of thousands of words, so trying to memorise them all can be daunting. However, focusing on the 100 most commonly used English words can improve your ability to communicate and comprehend.

These top 100 most commonly used English words are the words you’ll encounter most often in everyday conversation, reading and writing. Research shows that they comprise approximately 50% of all written and spoken English words. So you’ll very quickly get the basics of English. Many of these words have more than one form, such as different tenses or parts of speech. Understanding these different forms is key to effective communication.

Different forms of the same word

One of the reasons English has so many words is because many words have multiple forms, such as different tenses or parts of speech. Take for example the verb “to be” has different forms, such as “am”, “is”, “are”, “was” and “were”.

When we take the 100 most commonly spoken English words, we find that many of them have different forms. One example for all: the verb “to have” occurs in different forms:

• “have”,
• “has”,
• “had”
• “having”.

These different forms represent the different tenses and parts of speech that these words can have.

At the end of the article we provide a list of the top 100 most used English words, ranked by frequency of use.

Verb forms are important

Although it may seem to some people that the various forms of these words are less important than their basic form. But they are just as important for passing on meaning and expressing ideas. Verbs, in particular, make up a significant proportion of the 100 most commonly used English words and have many different forms, which reflect the different tenses and parts of speech they can take. Pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions are also essential for forming sentences and expressing ideas.

Top 100 most common English words