Most frequently used words

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

As I recall, ---- Trench, a notable mid-19th century English
clergyman-philologist (his first name will come to me as soon as I
hit the send button) concluded that an ignorant rustic had a
vocabulary of 500 words, or some absurdly low number.  He had
formed this hypothesis after overhearing a long conversation
between two ploughmen.  One would suppose that a moment's thought
regarding just the number of nouns a bumpkin would need to know in
order to name the parts of a harness, or of a pig or a horse (and of
course the comparable parts of a pig, horse, cow, dog, etc, don't
always have the same name -- pigs have snouts and trotters, horses
have muzzles and hooves, dogs have muzzles and paws), or the various
stages of development of a pig, horse, etc. (shoats, foals), or
gender-related words, would have suggested the folly of the idea.

Does anyone place this?

Richard Chenevix Trench -- ha! -- I actually read one of his books,
many years ago.

GAT