These “essential vocabulary” lists are called the General Service List (1953) and the New General Service List (2013, revised in 2023). They were designed as teaching tools for people learning English as a second language, built from real-world usage data and extensively tested. The aim was a vocabulary list with as few words and as much coverage of everyday English usage. Open the word lists panel on the right to browse through all the entries in both lists. The Expanding WorldI started by using a common linguistics research tool3 that sorted all of the words by meaning.