Jonathan Harris has developed a program that counts the frequency of word usage. The data, culled from a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language, is presented interactively in a linear fashion, with each word displayed at a size indicating it’s usage relative to the next.
It tracks almost 87,000 words and has presented some interesting phrases generated by the order, such as “vagina conservationists, condoms downright plagued” and “Germany october products popular”.
The word count ‘about’ page is also interesting and has some links to some derivative word count projects.
At the very least, you can find out how popular your favourite word is…