My conversation with Junya has given me an idea for my own use. Is there any source out there with a list of the most commonly used words in Homer, most commonly used words first? I know that the Chicago Homer has word counts, but I’m looking for already compiled statistics.
You might find the book at http://www.archive.org/details/homericvocabular00owenrich useful.
Exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! Thank you.
You can also make your own customized word frequency lists using the Perseus Vocabulary Tool:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/vocab?lang=greek
It’s kind of neat because you can select which books to include, which frequency thresholds to use for including vs. excluding words and you can choose how they are sorted. Also, of course, it’s nice because the output is text (allows you to copy, paste, resort, etc.), not a scanned pdf file. Works not just for Homer, but any Greek texts available on Perseus. There is also a similar tool for Latin.
An updated (1969) version of this book is available: Homeric Vocabularies (by Owen and Goodspeed).
It is the same book with one major improvement: the English translations of the Greek words are now alongside each Greek word. In the original book the English words are listed separately and cross-referenced to the Greek.
I bought a copy from Amazon(UK). It’s a smallish and not very expensive book.
Sweet. Now that I know there are 1439 unique words in book 1 of the Iliad alone, it gives me that much more motivation to use this tool.
Recently started using this book, but I’ve started thinking, wouldn’t it be better to list verbs with all their principle parts?
Thank you so much for this reference! I was wondering which of these two verbs, which translate the Latin sūmere, was used more often: λαμβάνω or αἱρέω. And I got my answer – fast! Nice. 
And thank YOU for this reference, too! A very handy tool to have!