15 most commonly used four-letter words on Usenet

This is from a list of the 1,000 words most frequently used in posts to Usenet. In 1993 Rick Walker (walker@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com) posted the complete list, culled from one full year of Usenet traffic. In that time, his program scanned a total of 343,945,617 words. Some of the "words" aren't really English words at all- -for instance "edu" and "X". For the most part, the list looks like a breakout of typical English text, except that Internet-related words like UUCP (number 52 on the full list) and .com (number 86) have crept in.

You can get the complete list via anonymous FTP from ftp.spies.com:/Library/Article/Language/top1000.use or by gophering to ftp.spies.com:/Wiretap Online Librar y/Articles/Language/Top 1000 Words used on Usenet

  1. that
  2. have
  3. with
  4. this
  5. from
  6. they
  7. like
  8. your
  9. what
  10. UUCP
  11. some
  12. more
  13. don't
  14. just
  15. know

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Copyright © 1994, 1995, 2004 by Kevin Savetz. The information in this book was collected in 1994-1995 and has not been updated since.