Vee Posted February 7, 2014 Posted February 7, 2014 I don't know if this has been brought up before but I was thinking, while looking at Lego pieces, that since Lego prints its name in every stud of every piece, maybe "Lego" is the most printed (four-letter) word in the history of humankind, or is this too much of a stretch, considering that there are millions of books with trillions of repeated words in them? Just wondering.... Quote
jodawill Posted February 7, 2014 Posted February 7, 2014 I've never thought of that before, but I really wouldn't be surprised at all. Quote
Legofin2012 Posted February 7, 2014 Posted February 7, 2014 Possibly! Or it might be the word "the"... Ever thought of how many times you have it written in your collection? Quote
Lord Vladivus Posted February 7, 2014 Posted February 7, 2014 (edited) Possibly! Or it might be the word "the"... Ever thought of how many times you have it written in your collection? That's it. "The" is the most common printed word. It's mad to think, as it's such an innocuous word really, and not one you think about saying (assuming English is your native tongue I suppose). Edit: Oxford Dictionary did a study on it. Edited February 7, 2014 by Lord Vladivus Quote
Vee Posted February 7, 2014 Author Posted February 7, 2014 That is why I, afraid of the dull "the", added the "four-letter" possibility in my question... Also "most common" is not equal to "most printed", is it? Lego is very uncommon, specific, but the fact that it goes in each stud may make it most printed... I guess. Quote
rodiziorobs Posted February 8, 2014 Posted February 8, 2014 (edited) That's it. "The" is the most common printed word...Oxford Dictionary did a study on it. I am not particularly familiar with the Oxford study, but I am familiar with similar linguistic research on Spanish and Portuguese. What typically happens is the researchers take any and all text samples they can get--both modern writing as well as digitized manuscripts that have been standardized and made OCR searchable--and then compile them all into a database. This, however, counts each individual text only once; for example, you don't multiply the words in a book by the number of copies. I am guessing Oxford's was something similar. These kinds of studies reveal a lot of interesting things, however they tend to skew more literary, as the texts most readily available are literary works. That being said, if you were to take every word ever printed on anything, including branded materials and packaging, I would say LEGO has a chance of being at least near the top, along with some other brands. More likely it would be some word like 'warning', which is printed on virtually every piece of packaging nowadays. The original post here made me chuckle though--I imagined some archaeologist a few thousand years from now unearthing the remains of our civilization, finding the word' LEGO' so often and, assuming that bricks were a sort of religious emblem (like rosary beads or something), concluding that 'LEGO' was the name of our deity... EDIT: Just caught that 'four-letter' bit. Edited February 8, 2014 by rodiziorobs Quote
The Joker1 Posted February 8, 2014 Posted February 8, 2014 (edited) Hmm that is a very interesting point, I did a few calculations and got some numbers, Say we take the average brick to be the good O'l 2x2 which has LEGO printed 4 times on it, As there are 19 billion bricks produced per year since about the turn of the century (lets round that down to 13 years for fairness sake. so that,s 19 billion x 13 giving us 247000000000 then that is x4 for our average brick (though it is likely more), Meaning the word LEGO has been printed 988000000000 since the turn of the century. That,s one trillion Eighty eight billion times. I'm not sure how that compares to other words but i think that's a pretty nice thought. EDIT- I have now found there have been 400 billion bricks produced since 1958-2008 , So going with our average 4 times per piece that means LEGO has been printed 1600000000000, Then adding on another 5 years to 2013 thats 380000000000 more times making the total 1980000000000 (one trillion nine hundred and eighty billion prints of the word) Edited February 8, 2014 by The Joker1 Quote
Hrw-Amen Posted February 8, 2014 Posted February 8, 2014 I think it would be a strong contender at least up in the top few. But as has been said there are lots of others in modern times. 'Ingrediants' would probably be another good contender. Is there some way to find out or has no tests other than those discussed already been done? Quote
LEGO Historian Posted February 8, 2014 Posted February 8, 2014 There are some things that are printed with such frequency that they fall under the radar... such as the word "the"... or "Liberty" on USA coinage (just look at how many hundreds of billions of USA coinage in just cents alone were produced). I'm sure that LEGO is way up there though... Quote
Erik Leppen Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 (edited) That's it. "The" is the most common printed word. Is English even the most common printed language? Wikipedia states that sported by native speakers, English comes third after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. (English language - Wikipedia Edited February 10, 2014 by Erik Leppen Quote
Tariq j Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 Good thought, it is a strong possibility, don't forget Lego produces more tyres than any car shop, so I won't be surprised if it is a commonly printed word. Quote
AmperZand Posted February 11, 2014 Posted February 11, 2014 There are some things that are printed with such frequency that they fall under the radar... such as the word "the"... or "Liberty" on USA coinage (just look at how many hundreds of billions of USA coinage in just cents alone were produced). I'm sure that LEGO is way up there though... Before getting to your post, I thought of coinage too. If one limits oneself to four-letter words per the OP, then "unum" which appears on most US coins is a likely contender. On the other hand, I suspect "salt" may have been printed more times. It's an ingredient in so many foods and, as has been mentioned, English is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. I don't speak Mandarin or any of the Chinese languages, but I don't think a word from one of them would count as, strictly speaking, they use ideographs, not letters. Quote
splatman Posted February 11, 2014 Posted February 11, 2014 About Chinese and other "ideograph" languages: Their words can be romanized. Once you do that, you can count them the same way. Whether you can do that in the strictest sense, however, is another story. Quote
KingPixels Posted February 12, 2014 Posted February 12, 2014 I think it would be a strong contender at least up in the top few. But as has been said there are lots of others in modern times. 'Ingrediants' would probably be another good contender. Is there some way to find out or has no tests other than those discussed already been done? Ingredients would be nowhere near the top. Quote
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