It's official: we're ruled by time

Time is the most popular common noun in English

We like to be punctual, we expect our trains to run to schedule, and many of us spend our working day watching the clock. Now the new revised eleventh edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary can officially confirm that we are indeed ruled by time.

Drawing on evidence from the Oxford English Corpus, the word time comes top in the list of commonest nouns in the English language, with year (3rd), day (5th) and week (17th) not far behind.

• The Concise OED is available from from Amazon.co.uk

All work and no play...

And we seem to be spending an increasing amount of our time at work, which appears at number 16 in the list, while play and rest do not even make it into the top 100. Contrary to popular belief, though, money doesn't quite make the world go round as it features at a lowly 65, but this is perhaps explained by the fact that we have so many other words for money. But we are still ruled by problems (24), it appears, with no solutions in sight.

...and it's still a man's world out there

Although person is ranked at number 2, it's still very much a man's world with man featuring at number 7 in the list. Child then appears next at number 12, with woman only at number 14. One man, Tony Blair, will have even more reason to be pleased, with the word government making a strong showing in the list at 20.

Others, however, will note with some concern that we talk far more about war (49) than peace, which does not appear in the top 100 at all...

The list of top 25 nouns:
1. time
2. person
3. year
4. way
5. day
6. thing
7. man
8. world
9. life
10. hand
11. part
12. child
13. eye
14. woman
15. place
16. work
17. week
18. case
19. point
20. government
21. company
22. number
23. group
24. problem
25. fact

The list of commonest nouns in the English language is just one of the
fascinating facts contained in the brand-new English Uncovered supplement of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary:

• How do we keep track of the language?
• How many words are there in English?
• What is the commonest word?
• Where do new words come from?
• How is English spelling changing?

Continuing to celebrate the new:

Words in the world of work and play...

New business and political terms feature strongly in the new revised edition of the dictionary, reflecting the ever-increasing time that we spend in the workplace.

So, how do we deal with the elephant in the room and the pig in the python...?

They're likely to figure large in the business-speak of plugged-in executives, together with the elevator pitch (a short sales pitch, intended to impress a senior manager during a ride in an elevator). So if we are spending so much time in the office why not stay ahead of the curve by getting the latest dictionary rather than settling for a helicopter view of the English language?

Keylogging or moblogging?

It's a sign of the times that words describing illegal activities such as keylogging, identity theft, shoulder-surfing are now included in the dictionary. But on the lighter side, the list of leisure pursuits now covers moblogging, leaf peeping, going radge while listening to crunk and, of course, watching the beautiful game.

And for those celebutantes among you who are looking to get in shape for that all-important civil partnership ceremony there's now the opportunity to keep your bippy (or bahookie ­ whichever you prefer) aerobicized!

Are you speaking my language?

How up-to-date is your company's business-speak? Which of these words will feature in your next meeting? Why not play our `business buzzword bingo' game, choosing a selection from the words below. Players check off these words as they come up in the meeting, and the first to fill in a `line' of words is the winner.

• Ahead of the curve
• Blame game
• Buy-in
• Cover all the bases
• Customer-facing
• Deal-breaker
• Elevator pitch
• Helicopter view
• Knowledge economy
• Metrics
• Nuclear option
• Pig in the python
• Plugged
• in Productize Pushback
• Upskill Value
• proposition Vulture
• fund

Definitions to your mobile phone 24/7 (UK only)

For the first time you can get definitions from the world's best-selling dictionary 24/7 via your mobile phone. To launch this brand new service, customers who buy the print edition of the new revised eleventh edition of the Concise Oxford

The offer is open to UK mobile phone users only, and is subject to terms and conditions, which can be found on the Oxford University Press website at: www.askoxford.com/concise/textoffer.

Based on the authority of the Oxford English Corpus and the ongoing research of Oxford Dictionaries, the new revised eleventh edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary contains over 240,000 words and phrases, and definitions, and provides the most authoritative description of the English language.

Publication date: 22 June 2006, available in hardback standard and thumb index editions

Oxford dictionaries and thesauruses are compiled using the Oxford English Corpus ­ a massive text collection of over one billion words of real 21st-century English ­ to give us the fullest, most accurate picture of the English language today. Analysing the language using the Corpus we can see the behaviour of words in context and identify new words and senses that are emerging.