My target word was a proper noun! about hello

[lynn]

Hi, thanks for reporting this.

As @stonedbovines points out, there are some words in the target word list that are mostly used as proper nouns, and that's where they get their high position in the frequency list from — but they are also obscure common nouns, like kelly 🧰 and weber ⚛️ and john 🚽.

I guess that the Google corpus I indirectly source frequencies from was created case-insensitively (it's Kelly that's far more frequent than kelly, and kelly is riding Kelly's popularity!)

I'm on an ongoing battle versus my word list where I eliminate as many words like this as possible, because I don't think they are fun to play for. I just took out the three words reported so far in this issue in 6b70120 and f67b501, but please do keep 'em coming 🙂

[SystemDisc]

@nipiy-ng I think shalt is valid. It's still very commonly used, especially in religious settings.

I'm not religious myself, but here are the "Ten Commandments" from Christian dogma:

1. I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any gods before Me.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
3. Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.
4. Honor thy father and mother.
5. Thou shalt not kill.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
7. Thou shalt not steal.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.

[mica]

I just got Kelly.. would be great if you'd exclude names!

[stonedbovines]

'weber' and 'kelly' are both words that have uses outside of being personal names

A weber is the SI unit of magnetic flux
weber: collins dictionary

A kelly is used in the oil and gas industry
kelly: collins dictionary

You will also find "john" in the list of possible answers. Again, not as a personal name!

[carpiediem]

I think it's likely ester only made the cut because of a boost by proper nouns.

[carpiediem]

Santo?

[lynn]

Santo?

Took it out, thanks!

[nipiy-ng]

hi, i got this weird word "shalt" which I feel is pretty obscure ( as an archaic form of shall), thoughts on including it? if shalt is included I don't see why not smalt and spalt haha (which are both also in the scrabble word dictionary)

EDIT: also found logan, which is scottish for a lake, and funnily enough i thought it was "along" and the whole row of yellows threw me off

[carpiediem]

Soma is an obscure writers in biology, so it's probably only on this list because of a video game by that name.

[sjoerdtimmer]

Is "Logan" also used as anything besides a first or last name?

[SystemDisc]

@sjoerdtimmer I don't think so

[nipiy-ng]

It is in the Collins scrabble dictionary with the meaning of "other name for rocking stone", but its rank probably was bumped up in the common words list because of the associated name

[miachenmtl]

I got droit. I speak French, so I thought of that but said no, can't be, this is English--but it was.

[SystemDisc]

@miachenmtl Yeahhhhhh, the English language straight-up steals a bunch of French words and phrases. We have a bunch of words in our language that are from other languages without any spelling changes, and to confuse things, we pronounce them differently. Like Paris \ˈper-əs\ and sauna \ˈsônə\, which sound a lot different in French and Finnish respectively.

[nintendoughnut]

I just got the word Morse. Even had the "orse" locked in and green due to guessing worse and horse. And whilst I'm well aware of what Morse code is, I'd argue that it is almost exclusively used in that phrase. If I ever heard Morse divorced from the word code I'd assume it was someone's name (I mean even in that case it still is...). In fact, spell checker detects it as an issue if you don't capitalize Morse.

Not saying it should definitely be removed or anything, just don't know how much fun it is to run into that word for other players.

On the other hand, I agree completely that droit is not a common English word. It doesn't have much context in this language outside of discussing 17th century maritime salvage laws. If I were to use "Morse code" in a sentence most (or at least a significant portion of English speaking people) would understand what that is, at least on some basic level. If I started talking about the "droits of admiralty" and flotsam and jetsam and whatnot I suspect I may have to explain what those terms mean...

[carpiediem]

Holt is the home if an otter, but I think it only made it into this list as a surname.