empezar
empezar is a Spanish verb meaning to start, begin, to get started. It is the 192nd most common word in Spanish, which puts it at CEFR level A1. It turns up in about 1 in 222 sentences of real Spanish prose.
192
rank
of 5,000
A1
CEFR level
by frequency
1 in 222
sentences
contain it
60.8%
running total
of a book covered
Running total is cumulative: knowing empezar and every Spanish word above it covers 60.8% of the running words in a real book.
Is empezar worth learning now?
Yes - empezar is inside the first thousand Spanish words, and those thousand cover 75.32% of the prose in a real book and 84.25% of everyday speech. Words this common are worth far more study time than anything further down the list.
Frequency is the honest guide to order, not to method. A word learned from a list on its own fades; the same word met inside a sentence you wanted to read stays. Check a Spanish text against the CEFR bands to see whether what you are reading is at your level.
Spanish words of the same frequency
- puerta #188 - door
- último #189 - final
- niño #190 - child, boy
- sacar #191 - to put out, to get out
- veces #193 - by, times
- hoy #194 - today
- aún #195 - still, yet
- tío #196 - uncle
See all 5,000 most common Spanish words, or look up any of the 16,244 Spanish words Einlang ranks.
Where this comes from
The rank is measured, not copied: 394 million words of subtitle dialogue for how Spanish is spoken, and 45 public-domain books for how it is written. Conjugations and plurals count towards the word they belong to, so empezar is ranked as a word rather than as a spelling. The meaning and part of speech come from Wiktionary. Generated 2026-07-27.
Also on Einlang: the most common French words and the most common German words.
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