In the last century, the linguist George Zipf noticed that the second most common word in English ("of") was used about half as often as the most common word ("the"), the third most common word ("and") occurred about one-third as often, and so on. This curious behavior, that the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its ranking in the list of words, became known as Zipf's Law.
In the last century, the linguist George Zipf noticed that the second most common word in English ("of") was used about half as often as the most common word ("the"), the third most common word ("and") occurred about one-third as often, and so on. This curious behavior, that the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its ranking in the list of words, became known as Zipf's Law.
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