1105: Word-Frequency Dec 18, 2017

Dictionaries can have thousands, even tens of thousands of words in them, but only a fraction of those words will be used with much frequency. Generally speaking, almost all words are rare, and in given text, it is not rare if only half of it will be made up of only 100 to 150 distinct words. For example, 80% of the Greek New Testament is comprised of merely 319 different words, while the remaining 20% is made up of 5,118. This is particularly noteworthy in English, as around 60% or more of the vocabulary can be considered Romantic in origin (particularly from Old French and Latin), while only 26% or so is Germanic. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon that sentences, especially concerning every-day, non-technical ideas, will contain all or almost all words that have Germanic origins. The reason for this has to do with the history of English.
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