how often does a word occur in this column?

[volcano63]

Use collections:

data = 'Genres\nAction|Adventure\nAction|Adventure|Animation\nAction|Adventure|Animation|Comedy|Drama\n' \
    'Action|Adventure|Animation|Comedy|Family\nAction|Adventure|Animation|Drama|Family\n' \
    'Action|Adventure|Animation|Family\nAction|Adventure|Animation|Family|Fantasy\n' \
    'Action|Adventure|Animation|Family|Mystery\nAction|Adventure|Animation|Family|Science Fiction\n' \
    'Action|Adventure|Animation|Fantasy\nAction|Adventure|Animation|Fantasy|Horror\n' \
    'Action|Adventure|Animation|Fantasy|Science Fiction\n'

data_list = data.strip().split('|')
print(Counter(data_list).most_common(1))

Results:

Output:
[('Adventure', 11)]

With \n in the middle, the Counter will produce a wrong result

data_list = data.strip().replace('\n', '|').split('|')
print(Counter(data_list).most_common(1))

The right result -

Output:
[('Action', 12)]

But I have a nagging suspicion that the column in OP is in DataFrame

---

Ooops, missed the post above