Keeping a tally of our usage, in so many words

It’s no surprise to anyone that the word “the” is the most commonly used word in the English language, followed by “of,” “and” and “to,” respectively, according to the website www.wordcount.org. But did you know that “doppelganger” clocks in at No. 73,009, beating out “conquistador” at No. 86,800?

The online interactive exhibit, created by New York-based information artist Jonathan Harris, 25, is an understated and simple concept that’s fun for philologists and plain-speaking folk alike. Visitors perform searches by plugging in a word or randomly typing in a ranking number.

Harris says that his artistic experiment brings data to life. “I try to show what’s interesting about data that normally wouldn’t be interesting,” he adds. “[WordCount is] about the way we use language and set up in a way that invites exploration.”

The site has additional built-in tools that allow for more wordplay. Launch the “QueryCount” program -- which continuously tracks the 41,870 most-searched-for terms in WordCount -- to find that the FCC’s favorite words are at the top of the list. (Who among us didn’t look up four-letter words in Merriam-Webster’s just to see if they were in there?)

The “Fun With WordCount” series asks visitors to find consecutively ranked words with a particular theme. For example, in the “Conspiracy” game, Nos. 992 to 995 are “America,” “ensure,” “oil” and “opportunity,” respectively. The latest quest asks for a faux “actor” name followed by a great movie character name suited to the ‘70s. “Leroy” as “Tawney Mystification” (Nos. 38,586 to 38,588) fits the bill.

The number of words in the WordCount database is culled from the British National Corpus, a 100-million-word collection of written and spoken language samples that represent a cross-section of current British English usage.

Harris included words that appeared at least twice in the collection and dropped those that were too obscure and archaic.

He’s now working on programming that will track Web pages and eventually the entire Internet. So when version 4.0 rolls around, maybe the now-unlisted “bootylicious” will get a higher ranking than the veddy British “banger” (No. 33,732).

-- Christine N. Ziemba