<pre>
There are about two million words in the English language and exactly
twenty-six letters in the English alphabet.  Therefore, the average
English word should be less than five letters long, since there are
over eleven million words that can be spelled with five letters.
However, in fact the average length of an English word is around twelve
letters.

One possible explanation is that human physiology and the laws of
acoustics prevent an arbitrary combination of letters from being
pronounced or understood.  However, something else must be going on,
because even if we restrict every word to be an alternation of
consonants and vowels, we need fewer than seven letters to express two
million words.

Probably the explanation for this redundancy is that English (like all
natural languages) was not engineered; it evolved.  Words evolved from
earlier words.  If the earlier lexicons were smaller than English, and
decreasing in size the further back in time we go, then this goes a
long way to explaining the inefficiency of English today.

If we imagine that at some point lost in the mysts of prehistory we
find a small number of primitive word forms, then these word forms
should have left their footprints in the current English lexicon.  One
form these footprints might take is "hard working words," i.e., words
that function as many different parts of speech or have many different
senses.

For example, the word "like" functions as eight parts of speech:
<pre>
	noun			"We may never see its like again."
	verb			"Fruit flies like a banana."
	adjective		"People of like tastes agree."
	adverb			"The rate is more like 12 percent."
	preposition		"Time flies like an arrow."
	conjunction		"They acted like they were scared."
	interjection		"Like, man, that was far out."
	verbal auxiliary	"So loud I like to fell out of bed."
</pre>

The word "but" functions as seven parts of speech:
<pre>
	conjunction		"It never rains but it pours."
	adverb			"He is but a child."
	interjection		"But, your honor, I object===="
====
	preposition		"I want nothing but my due."
	pronoun			"Nobody but has his fault."
	noun			"The but [[[halibut]] put up a fight."
	adjective		"He lived in the but [[[outer]] room." [[[Scottish]]
</pre>

Other words that function as five or more parts of speech:

<pre>
  after (adjective, adverb, conjunction, noun, preposition)
  aught (adjective, adverb, noun, pronoun, verb)
  as (adverb, conjunction, noun, preposition, pronoun)
  best (adjective, adverb, noun, verb, verbal auxiliary)
  better (adjective, adverb, noun, verb, verbal auxiliary)
  bully (adjective, adverb, interjection, noun, verb)
  con (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  cross (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  dear (adjective, adverb, interjection, noun, verb)
  down (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  fast (adjective, adverb, interjection, noun, verb)
  fore (adjective, adverb, interjection, noun, preposition)
  gin (adjective, adverb, conjunction, noun, preposition, verb)
  in (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  less (adjective, adverb, conjunction, noun, preposition, pronoun)
  near (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  off (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  out (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  over (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  plus (adjective, adverb, conjunction, noun, preposition, verb)
  round (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  so (adjective, adverb, conjunction, noun, pronoun)
  still (adjective, adverb, conjunction, noun, verb)
  that (adjective, adverb, conjunction, noun, pronoun)
  thwart (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  up (adjective, adverb, noun, preposition, verb)
  well (adjective, adverb, interjection, noun, verb)
  what (adjective, adverb, conjunction, noun, pronoun)
</pre>

Another way to measure the work that a word is doing is the number of
different homographs that it has.  This is related to the different
etymologies and functions of the word.

In Webster's Third, the following words have 10 or more homographs.  In
this table and the next one, "senses" refers to the number of senses
that the word has, "hom" refers to the number of homographs that the
word has, "pos" refers to the number of parts of speech it functions
as, and the remaining columns contain counts for each part of speech.

<pre>
 word      senses hom pos noun verb adjective adverb conj prep interj
 --------- ------ --- --- ---- ---- --------- ------ ---- ---- ------
 buck          62  13   4   32   28         1      1
 con           20  13   5    9    7         2      1         1
 pan           46  13   3   30   14         2
 pink          40  13   3   22   14         4
 rack          58  13   2   38   20
 port          36  12   3   30    5         1
 post          77  12   4   48   26         1      2
 flush         59  11   4   18   22        16      3
 frank         30  11   3   11   10         9
 gin           19  11   6   11    3         1      1    2    1
 pike          32  11   2   28    4
 scale         95  11   3   56   38         1
 tip           53  11   2   31   22
 bay           45  10   3   37    7         1
 bob           51  10   2   31   20
 chuck         30  10   2   17   13
 cog           23  10   2   14    9
 flag          60  10   3   39   20         1
 how           31  10   4    6                    15    6           4
 mull          18  10   2    9    9
 peel          20  10   2   11    9
 plat          23  10   3   16    5         2
 race          50  10   3   37   12         1
 shag          23  10   3   12   10         1
</pre>

Probably the best way to measure a word is the count of the senses or
different meanings that the word has.  Of course, when two meanings are
different is a matter of judgement.  There are two kinds of
lexicographers:  splitters and groupers.  Splitters tend to assign more
meanings to a word; groupers tend to combine many meanings into one
definition.  It is interesting to note that the editors of the
Merriam-Webster dictionaries assign hard working words to groupers.
Thus the sense counts of these words tend to be minimized in
Merriam-Webster dictionaries.

In Webster's Third, the following words have 100 or more senses:

<pre>
 word      senses hom pos noun verb adjective adverb conj prep interj
 --------- ------ --- --- ---- ---- --------- ------ ---- ---- ------
 break        245   4   2   89  156
 set          223   3   3   85  122        16
 turn         216   3   2   85  131
 take         179   2   2   33  146
 run          178   3   3   74   97         7
 strike       174   2   2   46  128
 cut          168   3   3   68   90        10
 draw         146   2   2   45  101
 line         142   6   3  114   22         6
 point        142   2   2  113   29
 up           138   6   5    4   10        55     59        10
 shoot        135   5   3   42   92                                 1
 open         133   4   4   11   35        86      1
 stock        133   5   4  104   18        10      1
 round        130   6   5   50   26        24     16        14
 pass         129   4   2   49   80
 stick        126   6   4   75   48         2      1
 block        121   3   3   84   32         5
 down         121   9   5   24   18        30     40         9
 lead         121   6   3   68   49         4
 close        120   5   4   20   53        40      7
 flat         118   5   4   55   11        44      8
 pitch        115   4   2   63   52
 beat         114   6   3   40   70         4
 roll         114   3   2   56   58
 slip         113   8   3   61   48         4
 head         111   3   3   88   19         4
 drive        108   3   3   40   67         1
 blow         107   5   2   38   69
 double       106   4   4   44   42        16      4
 go           106   3   2   18   88
 hold         106   4   2   27   79
 light        106   6   4   43   17        45      1
 play         103   2   2   30   73
 drop         102   2   2   50   52
 stop         102   3   3   47   53         2
 well         101   9   5   51    3        17     26                4
 cover        100   2   2   39   61
 out          100   5   5   14   12         7     64         3
 right        100   5   4   43   10        33     14
 top          100   5   3   62   29         9
</pre>

So what is the hardest working word in English?  My vote goes to BREAK,
with four homographs, 89 noun senses, 156 verb senses, and an
incredible 245 senses overall.  Now there's a word.
</pre>
