I'm using some free word frequency/concordance software to see if I really only use (have?) a vocabulary of 4000 words, as some suggest "we" all do. (Compared to Shakespeare's 20-something-k, "they" say.) I exported the last seven-plus years of blogging for study, although I suppose I should also add the Pixie Dust mss, tech columns, academic papers, and the odd spills of never-to-be-finished writings that get buried in subdirectories.
I should, but right away I can see this will be a huge headache, even with just the blog. The software considers "never-to-be-finished" to be its own word, for example. It also counts "abbey" and "abbeys" separately. I can understand the divisions between "admonish," "admonished," and "admonishing," but even that will take more sorting than I like.
So, what with having 6,712 other things to do today (like lie on the bed in the dark and worry about the week to come), I just want to focus for now on those words which surprise me, for I seem to have genuinely used them only once on this blog:
- prodigal
- unmindful
- brazen (really? wow...)
- amidst (again - really?)
- gelatin
- spookily
- pimiento
- miniskirt
- supinate
- cloak (huh!)
- hygiene (perhaps this is a good thing)
- spry
- bedfellow
- beeline (these last three disappoint me especially)
- tenacious
- sanity (oh surely that's wrong? no...)
- ethical
- ornamental
- earring
Actually (a word I've used a thousand times already), the list goes on for pages and pages, and I stopped cherry-picking for the faves above after page three. (Thus still keeping secret my underuse of "fiery" and "fumbling.")
I don't know if these being one-offs is good or bad, but it is surprising. It just feels like "lustful" "sorority" "wolverine" "foreplay" has occurred more than once, I guess.
Perhaps simply replacing a few of the 1238 uses of "something," the 894 uses of "things," and the 774 uses of "thing" would help. (To say nothing of the 17 "thingies.")
1.1+ million words and no Hamlet yet...
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