Eminem is the most verbose musician of all time, a study has found, while Mariah Carey, The Who and The Beatles are among the artists with the lowest musical vocabulary.

Research by Musixmatch has compiled the 100 most linguistically dense songs of the top 93-selling artists ever.

They then compared the word count of these songs by their unique word use, the total number of words used and how often they used a new word to find the artist with the widest vocabulary.

Not entirely surprisingly, hip-hop artists come out on top, with the Real Slim Shady singer taking a considerable lead: Eminem has a phenomenal word count of 8,818, which presumably includes the likes of "Mekhi Phifer", the American actor quoted in Lose Yourself, and "Munchausen's Syndrome" on Cleanin' Out My Closet.

Chart showing the vocabulary of the 93 top-selling artists Credit: Musixmatch/Musixmatch

The other top four artists are Jay-Z (6,899 words), Tupac Shakur (6,569 words), Kanye West (5,069) and Bob Dylan, who has a lexicon of 4,883 words, making him the top folk artist in the chart, as well as the musician who uses a new word in his songs most frequently, an average of one every nine words.

As the author of the study says, vocabulary size is no indicator of whether "one musician is better than the other". However, it is interesting to see how pop, rock and RnB artists sit along the scale.

The average word count is 2,667 words. Even the linguistic dexterity of Bohemian Rapsody couldn't raise Queen's score above 2,668, while Taylor Swift's countless mentions of kissing in the rain levelled her score at 2,524.

Michael Jackson, Katy Perry and Neil Diamond have smaller vocabularies than the average, while Paul McCartney has a higher word count as a solo artist (1,903) than with The Beatles (1,872).

Celine Dion is the only artist to appear in both the top 15 for vocabulary size and certified album sales, and, with a word count of 3,954, she more or less parallels Prince, whose count totals 3,906.

You can read the rest of the study and see the infographic here.

