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Most Common Food and Drink Words

Name the most common words for food and drink in the English language.
Source: Corpus of Contemporary American English
Not including words for meals or part of a meal
Includes seasonings but certain "questionable" words excluded
Complainers will be shot on sight
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: November 23, 2017
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First submittedNovember 22, 2017
Times taken19,786
Average score47.3%
Rating3.81
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rank
word
231
water
962
fish
1373
coffee
1392
egg
1451
wine
1537
salt
1548
chicken
1559
sugar
1663
fruit
1822
meat
1826
pepper
1897
vegetable
1898
beer
1982
cream
rank
word
2039
milk
2072
cheese
2144
bread
2162
tea
2214
sauce
2273
potato
2290
juice
2336
bean
2355
tomato
2365
butter
2489
onion
2494
corn
2551
cake
2644
chocolate
rank
word
2726
apple
2740
salad
2774
rice
2857
garlic
2939
honey
3024
soup
3128
lemon
3244
nut
3269
cookie
3331
orange
3361
flour
3436
salmon
3547
beef
3569
duck
rank
word
3581
sandwich
3586
herb
3743
turkey
3955
pizza
4169
shrimp
4315
pork
4387
rabbit
4403
pasta
4587
carrot
4660
peanut
4664
steak
4739
banana
4808
grape
Excluded
373
food
540
oil
1529
fat
2004
drink
2217
alcohol
3262
grain
4577
wheat
4759
liver
+5
Level 77
Nov 22, 2017
Says "fat" is excluded, but it's there in the list too?
+11
Level 82
Nov 22, 2017
So that more people can be shot.
+1
Level 81
Nov 22, 2017
#rimshot
+3
Level ∞
Nov 22, 2017
Grr.... fixed
+2
Level 82
Nov 22, 2017
Surprisingly missing: ham, bacon, burger, coke, soda
+1
Level 77
Nov 23, 2017
Bacon is really strange not to have. Burger too, but I think it's because in America McDonalds (etc) sell sandwiches and not hamburgers like in Europe mostly. So they would say "sandwich" and not "burger".
+1
Level 66
Oct 8, 2019
Honest question, so they really say let's go to macdonalds and have a sandwich. And when they are there they literally say sandwich at the counter aswell?? Big news to me. Why is the word hamburger so known then?
+1
Level 82
Nov 24, 2017
And sausage. No way to be so low in e.g. German vocabulary list.
+2
Level 76
Feb 12, 2018
I think I'm most surprised that "pie" isn't on there somewhere.
+1
Level 46
Feb 12, 2018
and fries
+1
Level 49
Feb 13, 2018
probably because a lot of countries call them chips, splits the results
+1
Level 71
Sep 22, 2018
SenileS: This is American English corpus.
+1
Level 65
Feb 16, 2018
I would be surprised to see Coke on the list since it is a specific type of soda. That is, unless you're from one of those parts of the US that calls all soda Coke.
+1
Level 66
Oct 8, 2019
I think most people call it coke, but regardless cola is not on the list either or more general things like soda
+2
Level 71
Sep 22, 2018
I mean pizza made it, but not hamburger?
+2
Level 74
Nov 22, 2017
Awesome quiz. Don't see the point of excluding the words you did. It would be more fun if you include them, and the criteria for exclusion seems very odd to me (e.g. wheat and grain are excluded but corn and rice are not; liver is excluded but egg, beef and chicken are not; oil is excluded but sauce is not). Maybe just exclude food and drink since they are in the title?
+8
Level ∞
Nov 22, 2017
Bang, you've been shot :)
+1
Level 59
Nov 23, 2017
You did say 'on sight'...
+1
Level 74
Nov 24, 2017
Posted this before the execution edict which surely isn't retroactive. So I'm still kickin'.

Are all suggestions now categorized as complaining? I took a minute to give a little feedback about what I think would make this groovy quiz even more enjoyable for us peons. A courtesy, courteously delivered. Ah, the sweet fragility of quizmasters....

+4
Level ∞
Nov 24, 2017
It's a joke, don't worry about it.

In response to your original comment, it's impossible to define inclusion criteria that everyone will agree on. Sometimes, as a quizmaker, you have to be arbitrary. And, in those cases, feedback isn't really useful, because it's just a different version of arbitrary. Thus the need to shoot on sight.

+2
Level 73
Feb 12, 2018
But then why make exclusions at all if it's all arbitrary? Just include everything and let the commentors shoot each other to death.
+2
Level 60
Feb 12, 2018
Don't understand why corn was included but wheat was excluded.

*BANG*

+1
Level 59
May 18, 2018
I think the reason things like wheat and grain were excluded but corn and rice weren’t is just because people actually eat corn and rice by themselves, but they don’t eat wheat or grain individually.
+1
Level 75
Nov 23, 2017
I was a bit confused about what was being asked for... but I'm not complaining... I like being confused
+2
Level 47
Feb 12, 2018
That's ok, better confused then dead...
+3
Level 59
May 18, 2018
BANG... oh, oh. Sorry about that.
+1
Level 70
Nov 23, 2017
how do you know when use of "orange" correlates with food?
+1
Level ∞
Nov 24, 2017
The source also lists part of speech. Orange appears on the list as an adjective and as a noun.
+2
Level 84
Nov 23, 2017
Rabbit is more common than steak? Get a life, people!
+1
Level 82
Dec 15, 2017
Note that the rabbit includes cases when it's not mentioned as (human) food.
+1
Level 75
Feb 12, 2018
Surprised rabbit was on the list but strawberry and blueberry were not. Even counting nonfood uses of rabbit, I would still have thought those fruits were spoken of more often.
+1
Level 59
Nov 30, 2017
Complainers will be shot on sight? Umm... I don’t like your rules
+1
Level 71
Jan 31, 2018
Are you complaining?
+3
Level 49
Feb 12, 2018
Bang! You've been shot!
+1
Level 14
Feb 1, 2018
I love this quiz. I really do. It really entertained me. But you should take out your "Not including words for meals" at the beginning. Pizza kinda is right?
+1
Level 78
Feb 12, 2018
He means not including words like "breakfast", "lunch", "dinner", etc.
+1
Level 23
Feb 12, 2018
Can I get Shot?
+1
Level 78
Feb 12, 2018
Bang! You've been shot!
+1
Level 59
Mar 9, 2018
Bang! I wanted to kill them!
+1
Level 68
Jun 23, 2018
Not complaining but i was really surprised to see rabbit. Of all things.
+1
Level 77
Jan 23, 2019
I would imagine that there are lots of other uses of rabbit (such as pet rabbit) that would bump it up on the list. As it is, it only made the list by a hare.
+2
Level 62
Jun 5, 2019
Yeah, that one is dubious. Surely the primary use of rabbit is talking about the animal in a non-food context? You could eat almost any animal, which should surely push many of them onto the list, e.g. dog, cat, shark. Fixing or clarifying that is my final wish before I'm shot.
+1
Level 65
Oct 7, 2018
Shocked that bacon didn't make the top ten lol. I typed it in three times to be sure.
+1
Level 66
Oct 8, 2019
Not sure what to think of this one, was sure if it ask for description of food ( which seemed to be the case) or food itself. Tried apple to test the water, so thought ow ok foodnames itself. But then sandwich is accepted, but lunch isnt, meat is and dinner isnt. I dont think you can have the name for a group, or a group of items put together, and the individual items both in the quiz.
+1
Level 56
Nov 29, 2019
complainers will be shot on sight :D
+1
Level 88
Feb 1, 2020
Rabbit and duck. All those times Daffy and Bugs Bunny set each other up for shotgun blasts to the face didn't pay off for either of them. They're both ahead of steak and lettuce which don't appear.
+1
Level 88
Aug 24, 2020
And ice cream. Duck over ice cream.
+1
Level 67
Apr 20, 2022
I cannot imagine any good-sized contemporary segment of Americans who would speak of rabbit in the context of food more often than they would speak of steak or bananas. Perhaps in a few isolated backwoods places in Appalachia there might still be such people,or maybe amongst e.g. the Amish, but those folks would be overwhelmingly outnumbered by Fast Food Nation. I suspect that the corpus is flawed. Perhaps their method of counting usages included non-food iterations of the word "rabbit?"
+1
Level 79
Dec 13, 2023
Yeah there is literally no way that "rabbit" is on this list but not words like "bacon" or "olive" for olive oil when we're talking about food.

This list is obviously flawed imo.

+1
Level 79
Dec 13, 2023
I just forgot beef and tomato lol