Eh?
Question: Is it true of all natural languages that the most frequently used words are shorter than those used less frequently?
Answer: Yes, the shorter the word, the more frequently it is used and vice versa. This is one of the word frequency relationships discovered by American philologist George Kingsley Zipf.
Jacob Martin
Wakefield, West Yorkshire
Answer: This is generally true, and is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy because if a long word is used frequently it is usually shortened, either to a word or, nowadays, to a pronounceable acronym. Examples are legion, even in English, which does not particularly favour long words. Examples include…
