Here’s a webpage that lists the 100 most-frequently-used words in the English language. Interestingly, a mere dozen words make up a quarter of all the words we read in terms of frequency of usage, and the total list of 100 comprises half of the words we use.
It has been estimated that by the age of six, the average English-speaking child has a total vocabulary of 5000 words. By adulthood, the number of words in an average person’s vocabulary might max out around 10,000 depending on level of education, but claims vary and are hard to quantify. In daily usage, even 5000 represents a working vocabulary of about 1000 and a sight-recognition of the rest.
