the least common letter in the english language?

According to Ask Oxford:

The inventor of Morse code, Samuel Morse (1791-1872), needed to know this so that he could give the simplest codes to the most frequently used letters. He did it simply by counting the number of letters in sets of printers' type. The figures he came up with were:

12,000 E

9,000 T

8,000 A, I, N, O, S

6,400 H

6,200 R

4,400 D

4,000 L

3,400 U

3,000 C, M

2,500 F

2,000 W, Y

1,700 G, P

1,600 B

1,200 V

800 K

500 Q

400 J, X

200 Z

So in the first instance, it would look like Z but.....

However, this gives the frequency of letters in English text, which is dominated by a relatively small number of common words (see What are the commonest English words?). For word games, it is often the frequency of letters in English vocabulary, regardless of word frequency, which is of more interest.

We did an analysis of the letters occurring in the words listed in the main entries of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (11th edition revised, 2004) and came up with the following table:

E 11.1607% 56.88

A 8.4966% 43.31

R 7.5809% 38.64

I 7.5448% 38.45

O 7.1635% 36.51

T 6.9509% 35.43

N 6.6544% 33.92

S 5.7351% 29.23

L 5.4893% 27.98

C 4.5388% 23.13

U 3.6308% 18.51

D 3.3844% 17.25

P 3.1671% 16.14

M 3.0129% 15.36

H 3.0034% 15.31

G 2.4705% 12.59

B 2.0720% 10.56

F 1.8121% 9.24

Y 1.7779% 9.06

W 1.2899% 6.57

K 1.1016% 5.61

V 1.0074% 5.13

X 0.2902% 1.48

Z 0.2722% 1.39

J 0.1965% 1.00

Q 0.1962% (1)

The third column represents proportions, taking the least common letter (q) as equal to 1. The letter E is over 56 times more common than Q in forming individual English words.

So it would seem that Q is the least common letter used, but...

The frequency of letters at the beginnings of words is different again. There are more English words beginning with the letter 's' than with any other letter. (This is mainly because clusters such as 'sc', 'sh', 'sp', and 'st' act almost like independent letters.) The letter 'e' only comes about halfway down the order, and the letter 'x' unsurprisingly comes last.

I guess it boils down to how you are looking for the most common letter:

If you do it as E being the most frequently used letter in text, than the answer is Z (least used).

If you do it as E being most frequent used regardless of word (just straight # of times uses), then Q is the least common letter used.

If you do it as first letter of a word then the least common letter is X and S not E is the most common.

Most Common Letters In English

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RE:

the least common letter in the english language?

I know the most common is e, but which is the least common?

Most Commonly Used Letters

The least frequently used letter is obviously Z.

The least frequently used letters are J, Q, X, and Z.

i would have to say z because we barely ever use that letter. if you look it up in the dictionary there are only a few words with the letter z.

Æ æ

It's used in some instances in common British writing, but it's not used at all in most varieties of English orthography.

I think z because z is hardly used. I don't no much words with z.

I would say z. The are lots of words with "x" in them, like exactly and extreme.