8 ms·
Google labs:word frequency in books over the last 200 years
I was surprised to see the high popularity of the word "fuck" prior to 1820
- prat 15y agoI was surprised to see the high popularity of the word "fuck" prior to 1820
- iunk 15y agoI don't know in what context they could use Geek in 1800. http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=geek&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=geek&year_sta...
- Groxx 15y agoOr the 1700s: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=geek&year_start=1000&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=geek&year_sta... Perhaps weirder, "Woot": http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Woot&year_start=1500&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Woot&year_sta...
- iunk 15y agoSeems like some are incorrect when i look at the scanned pages and one of those says Geck instead of Geek http://books.google.com/books?id=gvYqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA497&dq=geek&hl=en&ei=z2e4TZ_sNaPY0QGy8JT1Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=geek&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=gvYqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA497&#...
- Groxx 15y agoAh, good point. This is generated by OCR + reCAPTCHA, error is guaranteed to creep in.
- PetrolMan 15y agoI find it kind of interesting that a lot of words peak around the middle of the 19th century and have been in decline ever since. I'm guessing this has something to do with the increasing number of books published but it is still kind of hard for me to imagine that "the" is less commonly used now than one hundred years ago. The pattern holds true for a lot of common words...
- EliAndrewC 15y agoThe example in the OP (fuck) was so common until the early 1800s because of the typographic convention to substitute an f for an s. In other words, the word "suck" was being written as "fuck", which is why the word appeared so often until the early 1800s.
- jcr 15y agoIf you change the bounds to include the 1700's, the prevalence of the term is more pronounced (if you pardon the pun).
- tseabrooks 15y agoAny background on the origin of this typesetting convention? I'd like to know the whys and whatfors...
- EliAndrewC 15y agoThe technical term for this is a "long s", which Wikipedia describes at great length: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
- edge17 15y agothanks, that was incredibly fascinating and enlightening, especially the examples. The long s survives in elongated form, and with an italic-style curled descender, as the integral symbol ∫ used in calculus; Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz based the character on the Latin word summa ("sum"), which he wrote ſumma. This use first appeared publicly in his paper De Geometria, published in Acta Eruditorum of June 1686,[2] but he had been using it in private manuscripts at least since 1675.[3]
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- Groxx 15y agoUtterly awesome. http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=My+name+is+Inigo+Montoya&year_start=1800&year_end=2011&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=My+name+is+Inigo+... Potentially even more awesome is that they have the entire dataset available for download o_O edit: case sensitivity is more fun than insensitivity: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Star+Trek%2Cstar+trek%2CStar+trek%2Cstar+Trek&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Star+Trek%2Cstar+... vs http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=star+trek%2CStar+trek%2Cstar+Trek&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=star+trek%2CStar+... edit2: there are a whole bunch of geek-term bumps around and just after 1900. Anyone know why? E.g.: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Star+Wars&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Star+Wars&yea...
- splat 15y agoI have no idea, but my guess is that they don't know the dates for some books and the system automatically classifies the publication date as "1900" or "1901." If you search the word "quark," you also get a bump at around 1900 even though the word wasn't coined until Joyce's Finnegans Wake in 1939.
- ryan42 15y agosome interesting results: (sad about liberty) http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=liberty&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=liberty&year_... http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=l33t&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=l33t&year_sta... http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=hacker&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=hacker&year_s...
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- thekevan 15y agoThey had smartphones in the 1900s? Could this be related to that woman supposedly seen speaking on a cell phone in the Charlie Chaplin video? http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=smartphone&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=1 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=smartphone&ye... (Actually, "internet" also has a similar spike. I suspect some books are mislabeled in their dates.)
- nrkn 15y agoSome dates are mislabled, but mostly OCR errors: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22internet%22&tbs=bks:1,cdr:1,cd_min:1600,cd_max:1681&lr=lang_en http://www.google.com/search?q=%22internet%22&tbs=bks:1,...
- sylvinus 15y agoIs this weird ? :) http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=google&year_start=1800&year_end=2003&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=google&year_s...
- jalmos 15y agoGiven the birther-related news today, I was curious about another uncouth term. Sad results: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=nigger&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=nigger&year_s...
- edge17 15y agohttp://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=terrorist&year_start=1800&year_end=2011&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=terrorist&yea...
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- samuel1604 15y agowhile love is going down http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=love&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=5&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=love&year_sta... sad..
- dlsspy 15y agoI'm going to have an impact on google's internet bill this month.