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[Caveat] This is not directly a programing question, but it is something that comes up so often in language processing that I'm sure it's of some use to the community.

Does anyone have a good list of uninteresting (English) words that have been tested by more then a casual look? This would include all prepositions, conjunctions, etc... words that may have semantic meaning, but are often frequent in every sentence, regardless of the subject. I've built my own lists from time to time for personal projects but they've been ad-hoc; I continuously add words that I forgotten as they come in.

Josh Lee
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Hooked
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  • Now that I know the magic phrase is "stop-words" I've been able to find a duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218335/stop-words-list-for-english. However, I searched in vain before I posted - I'll leave it to those with more SO knowledge to decide to close this or not. Perhaps my phrasing will have luck for a future search? – Hooked Apr 24 '10 at 22:15

2 Answers2

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These words are usually called stop words. The Wikipedia article contains much more information about them, including where to find some lists.

Greg Hewgill
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I think you mean stop words.

There's a few links to lists of stop words on Wikipedia, including this one.

Mark Byers
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