Write any word to get the most common uses

Results are followed by percentage of total data searched

Use ”_” and ”%” as wildcards to do more flexible searches. See instructions below.

We are experimenting with a few new search engines here Search one word in 5-gram and here Find a specific word

Link to Database Contents





Ngramfinder is being developed solely from my own pocket money so far. If you like the idea behind the Ngramfinder, and would like to see it further developed, please consider making a small donation. If I make it big like Google, I'll still have your e-mail, and I'll send you a refund with interests :-)






Lists of top 100 ngrams
English 1-grams English 2-grams English 3-grams English 4-grams English 5-grams
French 1-grams French 2-grams Coming soon Coming soon French 5-grams


Anders Næss
Dear visitor,

Welcome to Ngramfinder.

With the Ngramfinder you can search ngrams (1-grams/unigrams, 2-grams/bigrams, 3-grams/trigrams, 4-grams, and 5-grams) by writing in the search field. The Ngramfinder will then show the 10 most frequently used ngrams in the English language, or in the language you've chosen to search from. After each ngram, the frequency of that ngram is shown as a percentage of the total data that has been searched.

Feel free to try out the Ngramfinder, and please leave us your comments, ideas, suggestions and alike right here below.

Yours sincerely, Anders Næss


How to use the ngramfinder?

When searching in the English 5-grams data, the application will only show results from the English 5-grams database. When searching in the English all data, the application will search all ngrams (1-5) in the database.

In the English all database, the data is ordered both by length (ngram type) and by frequency. Thus, the application will first search all the 1grams, then all the 2grams and so on. Results will therefore be ordered as 1grams ordered by frequency followed by 2grams ordered by frequency followed by 3grams ordered by frequency, etc. This is illustrated in the example below:

Example 1.

Example 1

When is it searching?

The application is made to perform a search whenever you type a word, a sign og are hitting space button. This is made so to enable faster search. Also, when the cursor is in the search field, hitting enter will ask the application to perform a search as well.

Be aware that though most searches will take only milliseconds to perform, some searches can take up to 5-10 seconds, if the application has to run through a lot of data before returning 0-10 results.


Query chaos and using ”enter” button

Sometimes, if you are typing, then deleting, and then typing again in the search field - and especially if searching the "English all" database, the application will be confused by the many queries that it is asked to perform. Hitting enter (while the cursor is in the search field) can sometimes help it do the search more quickly, if it's stuck somewhere between a lot of different searches.


Using spaces

When typing ”joyful”, the first two results will be ”joyful” and ”joyfully”. You can specify that you are searching for joyful and not joyfully by hitting space button after typing the search word, like this ”joyful ”. Then the application will know that you’re searching for ngrams that contain joyful followed by a space, and the first results will be ”joyful and”, ”joyful news”, and ”joyful surprise”.


From beginning or within

The default setting for the application is to search from the beginning of the ngrams. If you are typing ”another” while searching the English 5grams data, then the first result will be ”another quarter of an hour”. However, if you switch to ”Search withing ngram”, then the first result will be ”at one time or another”.


Using wildcards

Use ”_” and ”%” as wildcards to do more flexible searches. You can also use the % wildcard surrounded by spaces (like this " % ") to substitute for one or more entire words. For example, when searching for English 5grams, you can write: ”it % be true”, as shown below:

Example 2.
Example 2
Use the _ wildcard to substitute a specific number of letters. Also, use more than one _ wildcard to substitute for the exact number of characters you want. (for example you can try to search for "he ____ a lot", "he ______ a lot", and "he __________ a lot" to get different results.



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