Most common words in English about half of all written English. According to a study cited by Robert McCrum in "The Story of English," all of the first hundred of the most common words in English are of Anglo-Saxon origin, except for "people", ultimately from Latin "populus", and "because", in part from Latin "causa". Some lists of common words distinguish between word forms, while others rank all forms of a word as a single lexeme (the form of the word as it would appear in a dictionary). For example, the lexeme "be" (as in "to be") comprises all its conjugations ("is", "was", "are", "were", etc.),
Four-letter word letters. Typical examples include the word "work", implying that work can be unpleasant, or the game of "golf", jokingly referred to as a four-letter word when a player's pastime becomes an exercise in frustration. "Charlotte Observer" journalist Doug Robarchek noted in 1993 how many politicians have names with four letters, "Ever notice how many U.S. politicians have names that are also four-letter words? Ford, Dole, Duke, Bush, Gore ... and how many make us think of four-letter words?" Four-letter word The phrase four-letter word refers to a set of English-language words written with four letters which are considered profane, including