A thesaurus of word frequency in spoken / written English

[pizza]

Wouldn't such dictionary be very useful?.

For example, jaunty, lively and sprightly, all synonyms, but which one is more common in spoken / written English?. This dictionary would answer these sort of questions.

 

[emsr2d2]

Wouldn't such dictionary be very useful?.

For example, jaunty, lively and sprightly, all synonyms, but which one is more common in spoken / written English?. This dictionary would answer these sort of questions.

THIS might be close to what you're looking for as far as frequency of a word goes. It doesn't break it down into written or spoken, as you'll see but you can find the relevant frequency of different words and phrases.

I can't believe I've beaten 5jj to suggesting COCA!

 

[5jj]

http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/I can't believe I've beaten 5jj to suggesting COCA!

It's time I started taking vitamin pills.

 

[Tdol]

How about Google Ngram Viewer

Frequency can be a useful tool, but limited, and no matter how big and varied the database, it too is limited. With your example, sprightly is sprightly used to describe older people- frequency alone wouldn't indicate that. But the Google tool gives great graphs and shows the clear winner and does it over time (books only):

Google Ngram Viewer (search for your terms)