Vocabulary Blog

I performed a similar exercise on the complete poetic works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Given that it’s much smaller than Twain’s complete works, the vocabulary list is noticeably shorter–8,000 compared to Twain’s 45,000–and much easier to work with.

Given Poe’s reputation as the Master of the Macabre, I thought I’d take a look at some of the words he used to see if that title is justified.

Off to a good start . . .

That’s disappointing.

Same here.

OK, so maybe it’s not fair to compare words like dark and light.  Light is an overloaded word.  Websters lists 8 definitions for dark and 15 definitions for light.

It might be more interesting to look at the rate at which Poe used certain words in comparison with other authors.

The word death made up .035% of Poe’s words, compared to .086% for Twain.  Wait, that means that Twain used death at more than twice the rate of Poe.

Let’s try another one.  Poe used blood .012% of the time, compared to .015% for twain.  I’ll just have to reserve judgment until I actually read more of Poe.  It’s not the number of words you use, or even the number of times you use them that matters, it’s how you use them.

Tags: Poe

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