The most used words in your chat, and the one you share
WholeThing doesn’t just list a WhatsApp chat’s most used words. It finds the word or two-word phrase you both keep using: each of you at least 15 times, 40 in all, and neither using it much more than the other. Words like “the” and “okay” are skipped; “lol” and “bro” are kept. It also counts your top three emojis.
Why not just a top-words list
Count every word in a long chat and the top of the list is almost always the same: “I”, “you”, “the”, “okay”, “yeah”. That’s true of nearly every conversation in English, so it tells you nothing about yours.
WholeThing asks a different question: which word do you both keep reaching for? Not one person’s catchphrase and not grammar, but a habit the two of you share. Sometimes it’s a nickname for something, sometimes a running joke, often a filler word like “bro” that turns out to have been said hundreds of times.
How words are counted
Every message with words in it is broken into words, on your phone:
- Everything is lowercased in the chat’s own language. That matters in Turkish, where the capital of “ı” is “I” and the capital of “i” is “İ”; lowercasing the English way would split one word into two.
- Links, web addresses and email addresses are dropped first. Otherwise a chat full of shared articles would look like two people who keep saying “https” and “com”.
- Numbers, single letters, and your two names (and the parts of them) are left out. A name appearing 400 times says nothing about how you talk.
- Structure words are skipped using a word list for the chat’s language: “the”, “and”, “you”, “okay”, “yeah” in English, “ve”, “bir”, “bu”, “tamam”, “aynen”, “evet” in Turkish.
- Filler is kept on purpose: “lol”, “haha”, “omg”, “bro”; “kanka”, “abi”, “valla”, “hahaha”. A filler you both say constantly is exactly what this card is for.
Pairs of words next to each other are counted too, so a phrase like “good morning” can win on its own, rather than being split into “good” and “morning”.
The rules for a shared word
A word or phrase counts as shared only when:
- each of you has used it at least 15 times,
- together you’ve used it at least 40 times, and
- neither of you uses it more than about three times as often as the other. Past that, it’s one person’s word, not a shared one.
Among the words that pass, the one with the highest combined count wins. The Shared language card shows it large, with “You both keep saying this.”, the total, and each person’s count underneath: in the sample, “bro”, 143 times, 71 from you and 72 from Sam.
Your top three emojis
The Top emojis card counts every emoji typed into your messages and shows the three used most, each with its count, and the total: “These three do most of the work.” and, in the sample, “3,140 emojis sent.”
- Emojis are counted as whole characters. A flag, a family or a gesture is often several code points joined together, and counting them separately would report a flag as two letters.
- Skin tones are merged, so the same thumbs-up in six tones counts as one emoji. The card is about which one you reach for, not how it’s drawn.
- Number keys and the # and * keys are left out. They count as emoji to a computer, but not to anyone typing them.
- The chat needs at least 50 emojis in all, and each of the top three needs at least 10.
These three do most of the work.
emojis sent.
For comparison, the Unicode Consortium’s ranking of emoji use across platforms puts 😂 at the top and ❤️ right behind it, in its most recent published data (2019). Unicode also merges skin-tone variants when it counts. Your chat’s top three often looks nothing like that list, which is the fun of it.
Screenshots work for this one
Unlike reply times or silences, shared words and emojis don’t need timestamps, so both cards work with screenshots from Instagram, iMessage, Snapchat, Hinge and other apps. The text is read on your phone with Apple’s own text recognition, and the pictures never leave it.
A screenshot report stays with what’s on the screens. Each card ends with “From these screenshots.”, and the same bars apply: a handful of screens often won’t hold 15 uses of a word from each of you. Emojis only count when the phone’s text recognition picks them up from the image. A full WhatsApp export has every message, so it has the best chance. The export guide shows how, and analyzing Instagram DMs covers the screenshot route.
Is it one of the free findings?
Two findings are free in every report: the strongest one, and the one that answers the question you picked. Shared language is the direct answer to “What patterns keep repeating?” for a partner, “What was our pattern?” for an ex and “What’s our pattern?” for family. Both shared language and emojis directly answer “What’s funny about us?” for a friend. Shared language also backs up “What do we talk about most?” for family. The rest unlocks with the conversation, or with a 7-day pass for every conversation you start analyzing that week.
What it can tell you, and what it can’t
It can tell you, with a count, which word has become part of how the two of you talk, and which emojis carry the chat. People are often surprised how lopsided the emoji list is: three faces doing most of the work.
It can’t tell you what the word means to you, where the joke started, or who picked it up from whom. It says nothing about how close you are. Research on “language style matching” has linked similar word use to how relationships go, but that work measures function words like “the”, “I” and “but” (Ireland and colleagues, Psychological Science, 2011). Those are exactly the words WholeThing leaves out, so this card is not that measure, and doesn’t pretend to be.
An unlocked card ends with one general line, never about the two of you: “Words both people keep using often start as one person’s habit and spread over time.” For the emoji card: “A small set of emoji usually carries a chat, and people tend to pick up each other’s favourites.” When you talk is the other playful card, and how it works covers the rest of the report.
Questions
- Why isn’t “okay” our top word?
- Because it’s on the list of structure words WholeThing skips, along with words like “the” and “yeah”. The card looks for words that say something about how you two talk.
- Does it show a full list of our most used words?
- No. The card names one: the shared word or phrase with the highest combined count. The emoji card shows the top three.
- Does it work for Turkish chats?
- Yes. It uses a Turkish word list and lowercases the Turkish way, so “İstanbul” and “istanbul” count as one word.
- Can I get it from screenshots?
- Yes. Shared language and top emojis both work with screenshots, and each card says it’s from those screenshots. A full export has more to count.