Count and identify most frequently occurring words

Attached is a sample spreadsheet. There are three rows in which the first cell of each row contains a variable length text string. My actually files have MUCH more data.

My goal is to create a sorted list of say, the top 12, most frequently occurring words across all of the cells. So, the result might be something like the following.

the 6
is 4
by 3

I also anticipate I might want to change the number of words of interest from 12 to some other number.

What is the best way to do this?

One more thing: I'd like to eventually be able to have a list of words that do not get counted, and that would be words like those above (the, is, by, ...) that are not "interesting".

below is a pretty ugly and inefficient UDF

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Using your example strings in A1:A3 then

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IMO you'd be better off using a Sub Routine with an Input dialog to specify no. items required.