Word facts

3,122 words in our list have one syllable. They make up 35% of the easiest words but only 11% of the hardest. The longest is “strength”, with eight letters.

“Break” has 75 separate meanings in WordNet, “cut” 70 and “run” 57. Easy words average 7 meanings each; rare words average 2. The top 20.

S starts 11.2% of common English words, C 10.7% and P 8.4%. Together they start almost a third. X starts none of the common ones. The full A to Z.

The words English uses most average 3.8 letters; the rarest average 8.3. We measured the link in our own word list and explain why languages work this way.

Six in ten English words are nouns, common words are shorter and have far more meanings, and almost half of rare words have just one meaning. The numbers behind our word list.