A new common words section in the latest revised Concise Oxford English Dictionary has shown time really is of the essence, while days and weeks are vital too.

The word "time" has come out top of a list of commonest nouns in the English language, with "year" close behind in third position, "day" in fifth place and "week" at 17th.

And although we may clock watch, we are also fond of the word "work", which appears at number 16 in the list, while "play" and "rest" do not even make it into the top 100.

"Money" appears to not be as important as we might think, since it comes in at 65, although researchers believe this could be because of other versions of the same word, such as "cash".

"Person" is ranked at number two but it's still a man's world, with the word "man" reaching number seven in the list, with "child" at number 12 and "woman" behind at number 14.

The common nouns supplement forms part of the revised 11th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and is a by-product of the Oxford English Corpus, which contains a billion words.

Researchers at Oxford University Press used the Internet to take a snapshot of everyday language, looking at online newspapers and journals, weblogs, bulletin boards and online fiction.

Angus Stevenson, project manager with OUP, said: "The thing that struck me when I put together this list was that 90 per cent of the top 100 words were one syllable.

"And a large proportion were actually from Old English, meaning the basic words we use all the time in basic sentences are from before the Norman Conquest."