Embolden

Embolden is a word in a million. In other words it is quite common. Using data from Google Books, the Oxford English Dictionary has put it in a band of words that are used with a frequency of between 0.1 and 0.99 per million. About 11 per cent of words fall in this band. The most frequent words, in Band 8, occurring more than 1,000 times per million, are exemplified by the, he, and, from and some.

The only noun among these most common words is time. Embolden falls in Band 4, among words generally recognised by newspaper readers such as candlestick, rodeo and embouchure. A larger proportion, 20 per cent of words in the OED, come in the more difficult Band 3: words such as amortizable, prelapsarian and contumacious. The most difficult, in Band 1, still account for 18 per cent of words in the dictionary, examples being abaxile, grithbreach and zeagonite.