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wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English) says
A list of 100 words that occur most frequently in written English is given below, based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus (a collection of texts in the English language, comprising over 2 billion running words)
What does "running" mean in "2 billion running words"?
We talk about "running text" to mean the flow of text in the main body of a document, in contrast to individual words in a list, or short structures like headings or footnotes. In the context, it seems that the editor is describing 2 billion words in extracts from running text, and not a list of 2 billion distinct words. It is reminding us of the distiction between a corpus and a dictionary.
However this does not seem to be an idiomatic or common use of the word "running". The information is a repeat from the introduction and probably should be removed or edited.
