The puzzle has many variations of wording. A claimed original version is;
"Think of words ending in 'gry'. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is."
The answer to the above variation would be "language" as pointed out by the statement that there are only three words in ' the(1) English(2) language(3) '.