A Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary American English
A Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary American English is an invaluable tool for all learners of American English, providing a list of the 5,000 most frequently used words in the language.
The dictionary is based on data from a 385-million-word corpus—evenly balanced between spoken English (unscripted conversation from radio and TV shows), fiction (books, short stories, movie scripts), more than 100 popular magazines, ten newspapers, and 100 academic journals—for a total of nearly 150,000 texts.
All entries in the rank frequency list feature the top 20-30 collocates (nearby words) for that word, which provide valuable insight into the meaning and usage. Alphabetical and part of speech indexes are provided for ease of use. The dictionary also contains 31 thematically organized and frequency-ranked lists of words on a variety of topics, such as family, sports, and food. New words in the language, differences between American and British English, and grammar topics such as the most frequent phrasal verbs are also covered.
A Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary American English is an engaging and efficient resource enabling students of all levels to get the most out of their study of vocabulary. It is also a rich resource for language teaching, research, curriculum design, and materials development.
Mark Davies is Professor and Dee Gardner is Associate Professor, both at the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Brigham Young University at Provo, Utah.
Routledge Frequency Dictionaries
General Editors
Paul Rayson, Lancaster University, UK Mark Davies, Brigham Young University, USA
Editorial Board
Michael Barlow, University of Auckland, New Zealand Geoffrey Leech, Lancaster University, UK Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, University of Lodz, Poland Josef Schmied, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany Andrew Wilson, Lancaster University, UK
Adam Kilgarriff, Lexicography MasterClass Ltd and University of Sussex, UK Hongying Tao, University of California at Los Angeles Chris Tribble, King's College London, UK
Other books in the series
A Frequency Dictionary of Arabic (forthcoming) A Frequency Dictionary of Chinese A Frequency Dictionary of French A Frequency Dictionary of German A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish
A Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary American English
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Word sketches, collocates, and thematic lists Mark Davies and Dee Gardner
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK
First edition published 2010 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon 0X14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2010 Mark Davies and Dee Gardner
Typeset in Parisine by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Davies, Mark, 1963 Apr. 22 A frequency dictionary of contemporary American English : word sketches, collocates, and thematic lists / Mark Davies, Dee Gardner.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(Routledge frequency dictionaries) Includes bibliographical references and index
English language—Word frequency—Dictionaries. I. Gardner, Dee. II. Title. PE1691.D35 2010 423'.1— dc22
2009031322
ISBN10: 0-415-49046-2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-49063-4 (pbk) ISBN10: 0-203-88088-9 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-49064-1 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-49063-4 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-88088-3 (ebk)
Contents
Thematic vocabulary list | vi Series preface | vii Acknowledgments | ix Abbreviations | x Introduction | 1 Frequency index | 9 Alphabetical index | 282 Part of speech index | 317
Thematic vocabulary lists
Animals | 9
Body | 15
Clothing | 22
Colors | 29
Emotions | 36
Family | 43
Foods | 50
Materials | 57
Nationalities | 65
Professions | 71
Sports and recreation | 78
Time | 85
Transportation | 92
Weather | 99
Opposites | 106
The vocabulary of spoken English | 113
The vocabulary of fiction texts | 120
The vocabulary of popular magazines | 127
The vocabulary of newspapers | 136
The vocabulary of academic journals | 143
New words in American English | 150
American vs. British English | 157
Frequency of synonyms | 164
Comparing words | 170
Irregular plurals | 178
Variation in past tense forms | 186
Creating nouns | 194
Creating adjectives | 202
Collective nouns | 210
Phrasal verbs | 218
Word length (Zipf's Law) | 225
Series preface
Frequency information has a central role to play in learning a language. Nation (1990) showed that the 4,000-5,000 most frequent words account for up to 95 percent of a written text and the 1,000 most frequent words account for 85 percent of speech. Although Nation's results were only for English, they do provide clear evidence that, when employing frequency as a general guide for vocabulary learning, it is possible to acquire a lexicon which will serve a learner well most of the time. There are two caveats to bear in mind here. First, counting words is not as straightforward as it might seem. Gardner (2007) highlights the problems that multiple word meanings, the presence of multiword items, and grouping words into families or lemmas, have on counting and analysing words. Second, frequency data contained in frequency dictionaries should never act as the only information source to guide a learner. Frequency information is nonetheless a very good starting point, and one which may produce rapid benefits. It therefore seems rational to prioritize learning the words that you are likely to hear and read most often. That is the philosophy behind this series of dictionaries.