Comments on: the is and it are you of

the is and it are you of

clearly — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:42:15 -0800

The 100 Most Common Words In The English Language

see how many you can guess in 5 minutes

By: Rubbstone

Rubbstone — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:49:25 -0800

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:50:49 -0800

31. I've never thought of myself as a commoner, in any case.

By: syzygy

syzygy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:57:00 -0800

47 in four minutes (was interrupted for a minute by work stuff).

By: The Ultimate Olympian

The Ultimate Olympian — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:57:45 -0800

28 - and I'm common as muck. Three distinct phases: 1) First 30 seconds: I'm good at this, I might get them all. 2) Next four minutes: This is a lot harder than it seemed at first. 3) Final 30 seconds: Swear words

By: Joseph Gurl

Joseph Gurl — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:03:39 -0800

By: carsonb

carsonb — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:03:44 -0800

41, with a story arc eerily similar to The Ultimate Olympian's.

By: cmonkey

cmonkey — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:04:52 -0800

39. I feel so ashamed.

By: biffa

biffa — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:05:04 -0800

36, might have been a good idea to think before starting the clock. I was quite surprised by some of the verbs that made it in against ones I tried that weren't in, it made me give up on them in the last 2 minutes.

By: AndrewStephens

AndrewStephens — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:05:19 -0800

36, I feel like an idiot.

By: SciencePunk

SciencePunk — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:05:29 -0800

44, but are we talking most common in speech or writing; and what is the source? Because "paris", "teen", "viagra", "penis" and "fail" weren't there, and they make up about 90% of the internet.

By: qvantamon

qvantamon — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:08:16 -0800

41, not a native English speaker. Missed obvious ones like by, and, of, in

By: mexican

mexican — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:08:35 -0800

41. All of which came to me slowly.

By: Jimbob

Jimbob — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:09:59 -0800

49 which puts me...in the middle, I guess.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:11:54 -0800

Also got 49. "Sorry, you missed some." Yeah, well go to hell, obnoxious browser game.

By: nudar

nudar — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:12:15 -0800

40 NUDAR FAIL

By: pracowity

pracowity — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:16:11 -0800

sound?

By: BrotherCaine

BrotherCaine — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:18:03 -0800

46, but I got nothing for like the last minute and a half. I felt pretty dumb.

By: BrotherCaine

BrotherCaine — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:18:50 -0800

...and the survey says...

By: Weebot

Weebot — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:26:13 -0800

50. Woo! Second highest in the thread so far!

By: kid ichorous

kid ichorous — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:34:24 -0800

Gonna use the word "cornucopia" a lot today. Enough to make this game wrong.

By: kid ichorous

kid ichorous — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:34:49 -0800

Cornucopia.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:36:49 -0800

29 *hangs head and totally relates to The Ultimate Olympian but thought it was fun anyway. Fascinated by some of the words being that common, like write, word, sound or water.

By: Mojojojo

Mojojojo — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:45:26 -0800

33 and cornucopia cornflakes

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:46:09 -0800

A nice round 50. It gets very, very frustrating towards the end of the countdown. And there were some that I never would've thought of as being in the top 100 common words given an hour to do the quiz: sound, write, number....

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:48:45 -0800

PS: that Codebox site has some other fun games too, including the game of life.

By: Dee Xtrovert

Dee Xtrovert — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:49:17 -0800

That was cool. I got 47, which seemed bad, but others did worse! It's funny because today I was explaining to a native English speaker the "rules" by which one knows whether to make a comparative adjective with "-er" (like "wiser") or with more (like more insane) and this person had never known their were rules about that; they thought it was just what "sounded right" (which it would be for a native speaker.) And if you think of this quiz, nearly every word is a Germanic word - maybe only one or two Latinate ones. I took the quiz knowing that the most commonly used words in English were Germanic ones. It helped to be able to eliminate anything derived from Latin.

By: tracicle

tracicle — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:50:05 -0800

45, which I guess for this is a decent score.

By: zippy

zippy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:51:34 -0800

46, which is surprising, because I speak no english.

By: monocultured

monocultured — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:59:29 -0800

38. Not enough coffee yet. yes, that must be it.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:00:13 -0800

Metafilter: was interrupted for a minute by work stuff

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:09:46 -0800

Hmm... there's who, what, when, but now why or where. That's telling. I guess. Wonder if "meh" would show up if this were the 100 most used words on MetaFilter? (BTW, I don't mean this is a "meh" post. I hate the use of "meh"...)

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:11:12 -0800

oops, typo: that's no why or where.

By: Gratishades

Gratishades — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:14:00 -0800

Water? Really? I guess that must be number 50 or there abouts.

By: Shepherd

Shepherd — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:15:21 -0800

54. Also surprised by the lack of "why" and "where."

By: barnacles

barnacles — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:23:02 -0800

56, and as the saying goes: "the of to and a in is."

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:24:58 -0800

Actually, I don't believe "water" is used more than "where". Also, these 100 are from English spoken where? The US? England? India? Nigeria? Worldwide? If it's the US, I reckon "Coke" is uttered more often than "water"...

By: Dee Xtrovert

Dee Xtrovert — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:29:36 -0800

Does anyone know Wordcount? It is a lot of fun. I quote: WordCount™ is an artistic experiment in the way we use language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonness. Each word is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance. The larger the word, the more we use it. The smaller the word, the more uncommon it is. WordCount data currently comes from the British National Corpus®, a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent an accurate cross-section of current English usage. WordCount includes all words that occur at least twice in the BNC®. In the future, WordCount will be modified to track word usage within any desired text, website, and eventually the entire Internet. Here are some rankings of words included in the quiz above, according to Wordcount: 171: number 198: find 244: water 260: side 484: call 930: write 1125: hot As you can see, there is a big discrepancy in the perceived commonness of some of these words.

By: jmhodges

jmhodges — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:34:20 -0800

44, and I cheated by looking at the mefi frontpage for inspiration that netted me about 7.

By: Jimbob

Jimbob — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:40:31 -0800

I was explaining to a native English speaker the "rules" by which one knows whether to make a comparative adjective with "-er" (like "wiser") or with more (like more insane) Oh, now you've got me interested...what are these rules, exactly?

By: derekpaco

derekpaco — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:40:50 -0800

34.. I forgot 'and'..

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:42:22 -0800

MetaFilter: is it in you?

By: allkindsoftime

allkindsoftime — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:49:31 -0800

62 but I cheated by looking at other sites for inspiration too, and probably netted an additional 4-5 out of that.

By: no1hatchling

no1hatchling — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:52:54 -0800

42. Why was that so hard?

By: xchmp

xchmp — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:01:22 -0800

51! Missed some stupid ones though. For some reason my mind completely blanked out on conjunctions and coordinators, so I spent way too long trying various prepositions. Still, not so bad.

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:17:26 -0800

34. I hit a wall after 3 minutes and just watched the clock.

By: Nattie

Nattie — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:20:00 -0800

42. (Heh.)

By: crossoverman

crossoverman — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:20:53 -0800

34.

By: Ghidorah

Ghidorah — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:31:49 -0800

46. As someone who's been teaching ESL for nearly 9 years, I hang my head in shame. If it helps at all, I forgot nearly all the prepositions, much like many of my students.

By: Xany

Xany — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:39:09 -0800

40. Towards the end I started typing in phrases from movies I watched recently into the box one word at a time ... it helps to be a fast typist and have a good memory, I'dve been stuck at 20ish otherwise.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:41:46 -0800

That wordcount site says "sound" is 679. That's more like what I would have guessed. If you are willing to go as high as 850 words, the Basic English folk say you have enough words for nearly everything (though you also need to add a few specialized words particular to your subject). Is there an automatic translator on the net somewhere for converting standard English to Basic English?

By: Mike D

Mike D — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:43:17 -0800

Feh. Did "an" and then it wouldn't let me do "and", because "an" is on the way to "and" when you key it. Said goodbye at that point.

By: taz

taz — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:49:58 -0800

Mike D, you key them in "a", "an" then "and". In other words, once it registered "an" you could type in "and". I got 41. I can't believe I missed "hot" since I use it about eleventybillion times a day these days. Like right now, if someone asked me how I was? I would say "hot." And not in a Paris Hilton way. I'm surprised there's no "should"; I've said it several times today, already - but have yet to say "sound", "water" or "number". Should I be surprised that there's "his" but not "hers"?

By: shiu mai baby

shiu mai baby — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:51:38 -0800

47. Not bad, but I was annoyed by the ones I missed.

By: DU

DU — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:57:55 -0800

42. The most common word that I missed was "and" which is really stupid, because it's the first word I started typing. But it took 'a' and 'an' and I must have forgotten to type it a third time.

By: Dumsnill

Dumsnill — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:12:36 -0800

37. I completely forgot to include prepositions and conjunctions.

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:30:28 -0800

41, which seems a relatively common result...

By: Perplexity

Perplexity — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:37:00 -0800

45. Pretty neat. Some surprises. I wonder if they're collecting people's guesses -- I think that would be pretty interestnig. Next month they can put up "See how many of the 100 words users most often guessed were among the 100 most common words in the English language"

By: The Ultimate Olympian

The Ultimate Olympian — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:38:12 -0800

Lot of swearing in that list I'd guess. From me at least.

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:40:01 -0800

41 go team

By: Phalene

Phalene — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:42:45 -0800

No, but not yes? I'm surprised at that.

By: starbuckzero

starbuckzero — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:54:17 -0800

48 and I could have gotten some more if I had thought of past tense for verbs earlier.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:57:12 -0800

I don't believe I missed "and". 38.

By: Rykey

Rykey — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:58:23 -0800

Yeah Taz, I was wondering myself if Paris Hilton had thrown off the average for use of the word "hot." I got 45. I too wonder what the criteria for "most common words" are. Written? Spoken? In one country or several? Over a period of time, or just this year (or other arbitrary unit of time)? It can't reflect the everyday speech of contemporary Americans, because "damn," "like," "dude," "man," "yeah," "oh," and "well" would certainly be more common than "sound" or "water."

By: taz

taz — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:09:35 -0800

and why is the word "word" so common?

By: flashboy

flashboy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:10:04 -0800

34. Totally hit the wall of incomprehending blankness. Partly this was because I assumed I'd already done easy ones like "and" when, in fact, I hadn't.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:16:41 -0800

47, and I don't believe their criteria—some of the ones I (and others here) tried have got to be more common than some of the ones on their list. Still, lots of fun!

By: dbiedny

dbiedny — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:20:55 -0800

Sex and Love are also missing from that list...

By: verstegan

verstegan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:33:21 -0800

43. Interesting to compare this with C.K. Ogden's list of 100 key words in Basic English.

By: nax

nax — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:36:27 -0800

39. I was on the right track-- prepositions, articles, pronouns, query words, common verbs-- and then my mind went blank and I missed variations like verb tenses, duh. Sesame street really helped (over under around and through! who what where why how! is am are!) I also typed in the instruction sentence which netted a bunch. Internet quizzes have got to be a government plot to reduce the productivity of artists and nerds.

By: mhz

mhz — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:43:53 -0800

43. Totally random.

By: GhostintheMachine

GhostintheMachine — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:45:26 -0800

48. Did better on the largest countries quiz, 40/50. Would have got 46 on that one, but wasted way too much time thinking about #2 (which is so wrong) and mis-spelling Colombia.

By: parmanparman

parmanparman — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:48:56 -0800

36/100 4:00

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:57:46 -0800

51. Having long blocks of text memorized was really helpful for this. Thanks, Mr. Shakespeare!

By: rottytooth

rottytooth — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:01:14 -0800

156! Beat that! Oh, wait a minute...

By: spamguy

spamguy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:17:41 -0800

Slow site is slow.

By: bz

bz — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:24:45 -0800

35.

By: chowflap

chowflap — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:24:46 -0800

A dismal 39. "no" was on the list, but "yes" was not. Sad.

By: mitzyjalapeno

mitzyjalapeno — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:28:38 -0800

34 - ugh.

By: leibniz

leibniz — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:40:39 -0800

finally after two hours practice, I got all 100. It's surprisingly hard to memorise them all.

By: Debaser626

Debaser626 — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:42:17 -0800

41. Cornucopia

By: dances_with_sneetches

dances_with_sneetches — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:42:40 -0800

57 - I'm surprised I did better than most. I tried recalling common sentences. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, and others and chose the words that sounded common in those phrases.

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:46:15 -0800

46. I'm surprised I did that well.

By: jacobian

jacobian — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:46:57 -0800

38 on the first stab. I missed some obvious ones like "is" (?); there's also some words in there ("water") that I wouldn't have expected this high up. Cool game (for us language nerds, that is)!

By: 23skidoo

23skidoo — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:47:34 -0800

Yeah, I came in here all ready to feel all stupid with my 52.

By: Alison

Alison — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:54:20 -0800

Yeah, I'd like to see the corpus they're using to put together these counts. Some of the rankings seem really off. There is no way that 'water' or 'write' are more common than 'me' or 'not', which don't even make the top 100 according to this chart. 'Hot' definitely doesn't belong that high. Maybe they're using the Paris Hilton corpus.

By: swift

swift — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:12:28 -0800

43 I missed "and".

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:16:02 -0800

47 here.

By: Alison

Alison — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:16:23 -0800

Ah. I just realized that 'hot' is a typo in the quiz. It should be 'not'.

By: operalass

operalass — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:37:42 -0800

53. How is it possible that I got higher than languagehat? (Thanks for the link, by the way - I saw this on your site first!)

By: lupus_yonderboy

lupus_yonderboy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:38:31 -0800

46. I missed "it" and "is". Surprised how hard it is.

By: peacheater

peacheater — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:40:02 -0800

I got 43. Am slapping my forehead at the easy words I missed.

By: Susurration

Susurration — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:42:37 -0800

24 - my brain is just too highly trained to the abstract ... :-)

By: philip-random

philip-random — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:46:44 -0800

By: Phineas Rhyne

Phineas Rhyne — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:02:17 -0800

41. Seems to be close to the mean.

By: philip-random

philip-random — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:22:39 -0800

Proves to me that language (any language) is a fairly pointless tool unless it has a context. I mean, what value these hundred words just hanging out together on a page full of boxes. They don't "mean" anything. And I'm not just saying that because I only scored 28. Proves to me that I should never post comment (or attempt a skill testing quiz) before drinking coffee. Language, of course, is the context. Words are the lost things looking for it. Unfortunately, this improved clarity of thought does not improve my 28 score.

By: cobaltnine

cobaltnine — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:24:34 -0800

The two most common words here are 'Access' and 'Denied'. Blast.

By: heyho

heyho — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:28:25 -0800

I got a 68 the first time, thinking it was low... then subsequently scored a 51 the second time around. WTF. So my memory sucks; that's what I learned. Thanks; thanks a bunch.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:38:29 -0800

Well I got 51, oh well.

By: etaoin

etaoin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:57:00 -0800

36, not thinking well this moring.

By: NikitaNikita

NikitaNikita — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:42:45 -0800

49 -- i'm uncommon, i guess

By: aubilenon

aubilenon — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:44:13 -0800

Well I use "cheese" more than bullshit words like "of"

By: squarehead

squarehead — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:58:15 -0800

No, but not yes? I'm surprised at that. posted by Phalene at 8:42 AM on August 6 [+] [!] I'm pretty sure that's because "no" has adverbial and adjectival uses that "yes" doesn't: "no more", "no one", "no better", etc.

By: wfitzgerald

wfitzgerald — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:50:00 -0800

I counted up the 100 most common 'words' for the Google unigram data, and the following 'words' from the Quiz 100 are not found in the Google data:

call, come, could, day, did, down, each, go, had, her, him, hot, know, long, look, make, many, most, number, over, people, said, she, side, sound, them, then, thing, two, water, way, word, write

and the following words are in the Google data, but not in the Quiz data:

also, am, any, business, c, click, contact, e, free, get, help, here, home, information, its, me, new, news, not, online, only, our, page, pm, s, search, service, services, site, us, view, web, x

Also 's is in the Google top list. The point is, I guess, that the 'domain' matters a lot, as well as what you count as a 'word.'

By: Juffo-Wup

Juffo-Wup — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:41:43 -0800

53, but I cheated a little. I have an IRC bot in a channel my friends and I frequent, and it told me the top 10 words used there, which were: word, times_seens the: 14503 i: 12156 to: 9474 a: 7665 it: 6875 of: 5925 and: 5648 that: 5565 you: 4985 is: 4675 If I remember correctly, all of these were on the list.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:08:51 -0800

41. Another baffled grouser regarding sample, lacking "me."

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:10:08 -0800

Also missing: Lol butt gay porn fuck

By: ObscureReferenceMan

ObscureReferenceMan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:13:03 -0800

38. I feel like a dolt. But it was fun.

By: oaf

oaf — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:25:43 -0800

57, which was better than I thought I'd do.

By: turgid dahlia

turgid dahlia — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:55:39 -0800

Also surprised by the lack of "why"... Carl Sagan wouldn't have been.

By: quin

quin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:47:10 -0800

Yeah, it didn't have "fuck" which certainly suggests that this wasn't my 100 Most Common English Words. It also didn't have "zombie", "monkey", or "obsequious" all of which I say constantly, and definitely more than "number" or "water", whatever the fuck that is.

By: ErWenn

ErWenn — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:09:05 -0800

62, feeling good about that. I'm guessing the source has a lot of fiction or news, due to the relatively high rating of "said" but not "say" or other variants.

By: ErWenn

ErWenn — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:09:58 -0800

I got a few words just by reading the instructions at the top of the page. I would've felt pretty dumb if I hadn't.

By: Mental Wimp

Mental Wimp — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:02:21 -0800

Wow, I only got 43. Those little suckers just disappear, I guess.

By: beelzbubba

beelzbubba — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:32:13 -0800

Forty-eight. I too doubted some of the words like water and number, but since I was nowhere near the level I thought I should be, I'll get pissed at that later. Since I teach writing to first-year college students, I knew all of the passive constructions had to be there.

By: salvia

salvia — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:36:19 -0800

45. That was fun. What's up with words like "write?" I mean, not "happy," not "fun," but "write"?

By: yeara

yeara — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:44:14 -0800

33 - pretty good for a foreigner

By: AsYouKnow Bob

AsYouKnow Bob — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:50:59 -0800

47. It's an interesting feeling, as your brain runs dry and the clock keeps ticking. On the other hand, I copied out their list and found that I can just barely type in their hundred words in 5 minutes. (Even without having to wait for inspiration.)

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:00:19 -0800

It's an interesting feeling, as your brain runs dry and the clock keeps ticking. Heh. Like life.

By: Fuzzy Skinner

Fuzzy Skinner — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:37:23 -0800

Hey that was fun! But I know too many words! I only got 31 right, because I kept thinking of all those other words I know.

By: Stewriffic

Stewriffic — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:13:32 -0800

50. It was fun. Half the time the words were coming to me in the form of groups. Prepositions, question words, forms of "to be" etc. Interestingly, I found myself going to my second language to come up with the grammatical categories.

By: Dee Xtrovert

Dee Xtrovert — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:17:19 -0800

Oh, now you've got me interested...what are these rules, exactly? They're more complicated than this, but generally speaking, shorter words derived from Germanic sources tend to form comparatives with -er / -est - one syllable words, almost always. Two syllable words generally follow this rule, but nearly always when they end in a vowel, such as "yellow" or "ugly." Three or more syllables only rarely use -er and -est, such as "summery / more summery / most summery." So, longer Germanic-sourced words use "more" or "most." If a word's not of Germanic origin, it almost always uses "more" and "most." In part, this is probably because few monosyllabic adjectives are non-Germanic. I can only think of a few exceptions to this, such as "nice," which has been around for 700 or so years and is a sort of condensation of a longer root word. Exceptions aside, you can sometimes tell when an adjective is non-Germanic (which usually means Latinate) and only has one syllable, but still tends to use "more" and "most" to form comparatives, such as the word "tense." Newer non-Germanic adjectives almost never use -er and -est . . . I'm trying to think of an example, but the only one which comes to mind would be something like "zen" in the sentence, "His idea is more zen than the one I had." A significant exception to the Latinate rule is that there are words such as "messy," which are non-Germanic and have two syllables, but still use -er and -est. These exceptions almost always end in -y, and one could say that this Germanic manner of forming an adjective (that -y is a cognate of the German -ig) from a noun (as "mess" predates "messy") is why that exception exists. In other words, the word has been "Germanicized." That's how I look at it anyhow. People who are native English speakers probably never realize that this is all something that needs to be "figured" out by English learners, and that few other languages (of the ones I know, at any rate) have this problematic dichotomy in the formation of comparisons.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:46:28 -0800

Damnit. How did I forget "to"? I got WATER for christ's sake.

By: MuffinMan

MuffinMan — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:11:25 -0800

The 100 most common words of the average British squaddie: 1. Fuck 2. Fucking 3. Fuckup 4. Fucktwat .. 97. Wanker 98. Bollocks 99. The 100. Is

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:21:14 -0800

50. Seems pretty average. But it's not. It's mean.