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 category includes words that are euphemistic evasions of "stronger" words, as well as those that happen to be short and have both an expletive sound to some listeners as well as a sexual or excretory meaning (many also have other, non-vulgar meanings): "" (US), "", "", "" (US), "" (UK, NZ, AUS), "" and "", as several examples. Finally, certain four-lettered terms with limited usage can be considered offensive by some, within the regional dialect in which they are used, such as "" and "mary". Occasionally the phrase "four-letter word" is humorously used to describe common words composed of four