When using the Bible Linguistics tool, you’ll notice an option labeled “Exclude stopwords (for frequency)”. This article explains what stopwords are and why you might want to exclude them from your analysis.
What Are Stopwords?
Stopwords are extremely common words that appear frequently in any text but carry little meaningful content on their own. They’re the “glue” words that hold sentences together grammatically but don’t contribute much to the actual meaning or topic of a passage.
For example, in the phrase “the love of God,” the words “the” and “of” are stopwords, while “love” and “God” are content words that carry the real meaning.
Why Exclude Stopwords?
When performing word frequency analysis, stopwords can dominate your results. If you search for “the most common words in the Bible,” you’ll find that words like “the,” “and,” “of,” “to,” and “in” appear tens of thousands of times—far more than meaningful content words like “God,” “Lord,” “love,” or “faith.”
By excluding stopwords, your frequency analysis focuses on the words that actually carry theological, narrative, or thematic significance. This gives you more meaningful insights into the text.
Our Stopwords List: Full Transparency
The Acts1 Family linguistics engine uses a curated list of 262 stopwords. This list includes standard English stopwords plus archaic forms commonly found in older Bible translations like the King James Version.
Categories of Stopwords
Our stopwords fall into the following categories:
Articles (3 words)
a, an, the
Conjunctions (~18 words)
and, or, but, nor, so, yet, for, because, although, though, while, if, unless, until, when, where, whether
Prepositions (~35 words)
of, to, in, for, on, with, at, by, from, as, into, through, during, before, after, above, below, between, under, over, out, up, down, off, about, against, upon, unto, within, without, toward, towards, among, amongst, beside, besides, beyond, concerning, throughout
Personal Pronouns (~25 words)
i, me, my, myself, mine, we, us, our, ours, ourselves, you, your, yours, yourself, yourselves, he, him, his, himself, she, her, hers, herself, it, its, itself, they, them, their, theirs, themselves
Archaic Pronouns (~12 words)
These are especially important for King James Version and other historic translations:
thee, thou, thy, thine, thyself, ye, hither, thither, whither, hence, thence, whence
Relative & Demonstrative Pronouns (~10 words)
who, whom, whose, which, what, that, this, these, those
Indefinite Pronouns (~25 words)
all, another, any, anybody, anyone, anything, both, each, either, everybody, everyone, everything, few, many, most, much, neither, nobody, none, nothing, one, other, others, several, some, somebody, someone, something, such
Common Verbs: “To Be” (~11 words)
am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being plus archaic forms: art, wast, wert
Common Verbs: “To Have” (~7 words)
have, has, had, having plus archaic forms: hath, hast, hadst
Common Verbs: “To Do” (~10 words)
do, does, did, doing, done plus archaic forms: doth, doest, didst
Modal Verbs (~18 words)
will, would, shall, should, can, could, may, might, must, ought, need plus archaic forms: wilt, wouldst, shalt, shouldst, canst, couldst, mayest
Common Adverbs (~35 words)
again, also, already, always, ever, never, now, then, here, there, where, when, how, why, just, only, even, still, too, very, more, most, less, least, well, thus, therefore, thereby, wherein, wherefore, hereby, herein, therein, thereof, whereof
Archaic Adverbs (~5 words)
yea, nay, verily, behold, lo
Negation Words (~7 words)
no, not, neither, nor, none, never, nothing
Other Function Words (~20 words)
Including determiners, number words, and archaic expressions: every, same, own, certain, let, than, like, once, further, rather, else, otherwise, however, moreover, furthermore, nevertheless, notwithstanding, whatsoever, whosoever, wheresoever, whithersoever, howsoever
When to Keep Stopwords
There are times when you might want to include stopwords in your analysis:
- Stylistic analysis: Comparing how different translations use articles, pronouns, or verb forms
- Studying specific words: If you’re interested in how “thou” vs “you” is used across translations
- Complete word counts: When you need total word statistics rather than content-word statistics
- Phrase patterns: When analyzing grammatical patterns that include function words
How to Use This Option
In the Bible Linguistics tool:
- Check “Exclude stopwords” (default): Your frequency results will focus on content words—nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other meaningful terms.
- Uncheck “Exclude stopwords”: Your results will include all words, showing the complete frequency distribution including common function words.
For most theological or thematic analysis, we recommend keeping stopwords excluded. This helps you discover what the text is actually about rather than how it’s grammatically constructed.
Try it yourself: Visit the Bible Linguistics tool and run a word frequency query with and without stopwords to see the difference!