I do have the impression that #dork and #dweeb were about as common as #geek and #nerd when I was a kid. But #geek and #nerd have taken off since then #GoogleBooks #NGramViewer

Pondering the Big Questions:

When did "meet-cute" become A Thing?

Ngram Viewer says ... mostly post-2010:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=meet+cute%2Cmeet-cute&year_start=1919&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3

It seems recent to me.

(Both "meet cute" and "meet-cute" plotted. I suspect the unhyphenated version will have numerous false positives as in "meet cute (girl(s)|guy(s))".)

#ngrams #NgramViewer

On the changing of language usage patterns over time, homelessness is an interesting case.

I'd discovered some time back, that term broke into usage suddenly in 1980. It wasn't entirely unknown before, but the concept often appeared as a compound verb, "made homeless", rather than as a noun, "homeless (man|woman|person)", and almost always as an immediate consequence of some disaster, such as a structural fire, hurricane, flood, or earthquake. Earlier terms that had been used to describe long-term lack of reliable housing include vagrant, itinerant, and the like (I'd need to look these up again).

Part of this seems to be due to changes in how housing was approached in the US, and especially the elimination of alternatives to single-family dwellings (e.g., rooming houses, residence hotels) in many areas. But some also seems to be a linguistic, social, and political change in usage.

Ngram: "homelessness": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=homelessness&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=26&smoothing=3

Ngram: "homeless, vagrant, itinerant": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=homeless%2C+itinerant%2C+unhoused%2C+vagrant&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=26&smoothing=3

The message is that ngrams and the Google corpus are useful but also require interpretation.

#ngrams #NgramViewer #homelessness

Google Ngrams: "white nationalist"

Apropos some recent discussions, I've been looking into a number of aspects of this term and aspects related to it.

Google Ngram Viewer is a powerful, if occasionally problematic, tool for exploring language and terms used within it.

An ngram of the headline phrase of this toot ... shows an immense rise in prevalence of the term through 2019 (the most recent data in the corpus), roughly 10 times the 2010 level.

What's driving that isn't necessarily clear --- language and usage reflects both the reflected real-world phenomena described by terms, and preferences for certain terms over others.

But it's attention-grabbing all the same. And a bit sobering.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=white+nationalist&year_start=1919&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=1

#ngrams #NgramViewer #racism

I always felt that #formula1 was a thing of the past. #NgramViewer

Ngram Viewer Answers the Deep Questions: When did highway travel take off?

A weighted query showing the comparative trajectories of the terms: road, street, avenue, boulevard, highway, freeway, tollway, and expressway.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28road%2A100%29%2C%28highway%2A700%29%2C%28freeway%2A9000%29%2C%28tollway%2A600000%29%2C%28expressway%2A25000%29%2C%28avenue%2A1200%29%2C%28boulevard%2A10000%29%2C%28street%2A150%29&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=9&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%28road%20%2A%20100%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28highway%20%2A%20700%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28freeway%20%2A%209000%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28tollway%20%2A%20600000%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28expressway%20%2A%2025000%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28avenue%20%2A%201200%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28boulevard%20%2A%2010000%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28street%20%2A%20150%29%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2C(road%20*%20100)%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C(highway%20*%20700)%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C(freeway%20*%209000)%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C(tollway%20*%20600000)%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C(expressway%20*%2025000)%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C(avenue%20*%201200)%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C(boulevard%20*%2010000)%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C(street%20*%20150)%3B%2Cc0

For some explanation / background:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32202392

#Transportation #Highways #Ngrams #NgramViewer #ItsAllNewerThanYouThink

@emacsomancer I mean, we might want to talk about the British war on ... Easter:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Christmas%2CEaster&year_start=1550&year_end=2019&corpus=29&smoothing=10&direct_url=t1%3B%2CChristmas%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CEaster%3B%2Cc0

#TheWarOnEaster #Ngrams #NgramViewer