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It's easy to generate a strong password quickly using the system dictionary:

$ for i in {1..4}; do shuf --head-count=1 /usr/share/dict/words; done
Amelanchier
whitecup
ankhs
antispasmodics

However, this isn't exactly the easiest list of words to remember. Is there a package or file available for getting either the N most used words (for example Simplified English) or a list of words either ordered by popularity or with a popularity index so I can choose how many to use?

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l0b0
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  • by the way why to use for loop instead using just `shuf --head-count=4 /usr/share/dict/words`? – Pandya Mar 24 '16 at 13:25
  • @Pandya Because then you're reducing the number of words every time you run. The more words the less this matters, but it *does* make a difference. – l0b0 Mar 24 '16 at 13:51
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's asking for data that isn't related to Unix in any way. It *might* be on-topic on [opendata.se], but check their [site description](http://opendata.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Mar 24 '16 at 23:23
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    I use the [Beale word list](http://world.std.com/~reinhold/beale.wordlist.asc) with plurals removed, and keeping only words of 3–5 letters. This gives me a little over 2¹² words which I find easily memorable. #slugtriesgoalokra – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Mar 24 '16 at 23:29
  • @Gilles I did ask about "Applications packaged in \*nix distributions", as per the FAQ... – l0b0 Mar 25 '16 at 06:54
  • @l0b0 Applications, not data. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Mar 25 '16 at 13:40

2 Answers2

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Depending on your language, search for existing national corpora - many provide such lists, often without any licensing restrictions.

For a frequency list of English words, try this short one from the British National Corpus or longer ones from the Corpus of Contemporary American English.

Radovan Garabík
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The GNU troff/groff package has a file eign in it that has 133 very common english words. On my Arch linux laptop it is: /usr/share/groff/1.22.3/eign

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    I suspect that collection is a bit too small to make for sufficient entropy while being memorable. – l0b0 Mar 24 '16 at 15:58
  • @l0b0 - Good point. I misread your question when I answered it. My own biases led me to believe that you were looking for a list of "stop words", words to avoid as "too common". –  Mar 24 '16 at 22:34