Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Ngrams and the Evolution of Words

The beauty of technology is that so much information is at our fingertips. Ever since Google scanned 500 billion books (that's a lot of books) we have even more information available to us. The Google ngram viewer shows us word trends. You can type in some words or phrases and it will show the trend of those words across time. It's been around for a while, but it's still a lot of fun.

One great example is throve vs thrived. As the graph shows, it wasn't until the early twentieth century that thrived (the red line) took over as the popular choice.

I tried young adult vs teen vs teenager with an unexpected result:

And someone else found the point where the long s was disused in the early 1800s. Beft vs Best:
I could spend hours trying different variations on these graphs.  

Have you found any cool results?

Note: I'm still in the jury duty process. So far I haven't been picked yet for a trial but neither have I been officially dismissed. It's likely I'll have to head in to the Supreme Court tomorrow. So again, I may not be around much for the next three weeks, but I'll try and catch up with blog visits.

44 comments:

DEZMOND said...

hope jury duty will give you some inspiration for writing :)

Golden Eagle said...

I've never tried out the ngram viewer, but those are interesting results!

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Never tried it. Funny that 'young adult' is on the decline when there's a whole, giant genre of books described as young adult.
As I told Matthew at QQQE - jury duty sucks. (He's stuck there this week as well.)

J E Fritz said...

Those are some really interesting graphs, especially how there's been a slight uptick of "throve" usage recently. I hope jury duty goes well. If it's anything like mine, then you'll have plenty of time for reading.

Liz A. said...

I saw the ngrams on some other blog a while ago, but I never managed to go and play with it. I should go and do that...

Sorry about jury duty. Three weeks! Yikes. I was annoyed with the week I had to call in (and ultimately ended up on a trial that lasted two days). Maybe you'll get dismissed?

Charlotte Brentwood said...

I've looked at some interesting Ngrams on my blog here: http://charlottesannazzaro.blogspot.com/2011/05/ngram-words-through-time.html

I was looking more at ideas than actual word usage. It certainly is interesting to see how vocabulary has changed over time.

Laura Eno said...

Yuck, jury duty...
Are writers the only ones who use the term "Young Adult" anymore?

Cortney Pearson said...

I've never heard of the ngram viewer before! Thanks for sharing, and good luck with jury duty!

Southpaw said...

That a new toy to me. Looks like fun.

Unknown said...

Whoah, I'd never heard of this! Looks like I have a new toy to play around with.

Good luck with jury duty!

Bethany Elizabeth said...

What a cool gadget! I love Google. And I fear them, just a little bit. :) That really is AWESOME. :)

LTM said...

ahh. Another victim of jury duty. Poor thing. I've never played this game, but I love it. How fun is that?

Beft? What? :D <3

Matt Larkin said...

Good luck on jury duty. Don't recall seeing "beft" before, though maybe I have.

Luanne G. Smith said...

That would be a great tool for historical writers I would think.

Jess said...

Ooh good luck with jury duty. Awesome post though! What a cool discovery!

McKenzie McCann said...

Oh, you're on jury duty? Sorry I'm out of the loop. I was at Outdoor School all week.

Anyway, on topic, I've never seen that program before, but it sure looks interesting.

Anonymous said...

That is also a new toy for me. It could be more addicting to me than angry birds!

Anonymous said...

That is so cool! Thanks for entertaining me for a moment.. love the beft and best

Sharon K. Mayhew said...

Very cool...I haven't heard of it before.

Good luck with jury duty...every experience can be used in your writing. :D Even if you don't know when you'll use the experience...keep a journal about your experience!

Carrie Butler said...

That's so cool, Lynda! Thanks for sharing it with us. I'm off to play now. :)

Good luck with jury duty!

Joanne said...

Really interesting. Thanks for the link.

Hope you find jury duty a positive experience. Good luck!

Lynda R Young as Elle Cardy said...

Dezzy, thanks. That's what I'm hoping too.

Golden, I recommend it. It's lots of fun.

Alex, haha I don't mind about jury duty because I've never done it before.

JEFritz, yeah.. I don't understand that uptick haha

Liz, yes, do, it's lots of fun. A two day trial sounds interesting...

Charlotte, oh, fabulous! I'll check them out

Laura, yeah, I was wondering that myself.

Cortney, thanks

Southpaw, gotta love new toys ;)

Caitlin, thanks

Bethany, haha yeah, they are to be feared... ;)

Lynda R Young as Elle Cardy said...

Leigh, yeah, Beft (best) comes from the f being an elongated s in the old texts. It's why it's so hard to read olde english. Cool huh?

Matt, haha it's unlikely unless you enjoy reading super old texts.

Luanne, It's also a good tool for seeing modern trends as well. Try looking up vampires vs werewolves ;)

Jess, thanks

McKenzie, yeah, I've not done jury duty before.

Lynn, haha yeah, I've avoided angry birds because I've heard it's so addictive hehe.

Michelle, hehe any time ;)

Sharon, absolutely! That's the plan :)

Carrie, have fun!

Joanne, thanks.

Old Kitty said...

No - no more distractions!! Especially fun ones like this! LOL!! Yay!! Thanks Lydia!! Hope all is going well with jury duty (you're the second one here in blogland on jury duty I know of - the other is Matthew McNish!). Take care
x

Sarah Tokeley said...

That looks like fun, and not a means of procrastination at all :-)

Hope the coffee is good at the supreme court!

Bish Denham said...

Okay, now I've got a new site to keep me occupied doing other things! LOVE IT!

Susan Kaye Quinn said...

ngrams is so cool, it's one of the few things I have bookmarked! I was just referring a historical fiction writer to it, to check out some word usage. #Coolness

Rachna Chhabria said...

These ngrams are cool.Thanks for introducing me to them. Your jury duty sure will give you lots of inspiration...Lynda will it be a courtroom drama next?

M Pax said...

Have fun on the jury. Maybe you'll get a great story idea or 50. :)

The graphs are cool.

Lynda R Young as Elle Cardy said...

Old Kitty, lol yeah, it can take up some time ;)

Sarah, no! Not at all. You could call it research ;)

Bish, hehe

Susan, yes! It's lots of cool

Rachna, hahaha I'm not sure I'd write a full on courtroom drama although one of my stories does have a trial...

Mary, hope so... still not picked though hahaha

Carol Riggs said...

That looks fascinating! Maybe you'll get lucky and NOT get picked for jury duty (unless you really wanna, LOL).

CherylAnne Ham said...

So cool! I hadn't seen this before. Now I want to go play around with it. :D

Melissa Sugar said...

This is cool. I have heard and read about it while learning about SEO and keywords, but this was my first time to see it in action. Thanks for sharing.

So you are stuck in Jury Limbo (not picked, but not yet excused). Have you been questioned as part of a panel? I know that the jury selection process is long and tedious, but it serves an important purpose. At least you can get some reading or writing done while you wait to be called for questioning. I bet you can come up with a lot of story and character ideas as well.

Take comfort in not being sequestered and having your computer & phone taken from you.

Hang in there
Melissa

Jamie Gibbs said...

That's awesome! I'm heading straight over there and having a play :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this. I wasn't familiar with the ngram viewer.

Jury duty. :( Like someone else mentioned, maybe you'll get some inspiration from it.

Amie Kaufman said...

That's so cool, I've never seen ngrams before! My new procrastination tool...

I'm permanently excluded from jury duty because (a) I have a law degree and (b) I work in a field rules me out... which means that of course I think it would be fascinating. Hopefully you'll get a short story at least out of some of the characters ou meet!

Will Burke said...

I've seen some old books (early 1800's) where the "s" nd "f" were interchanged. Confused the hell out of me! But I have to wonder if "teen" had another meaning?

Cynthia Chapman Willis said...

Interesting, but I am going to pretend that I don't know about this ngram viewer as it sounds like a big distractor.

Good luck with the jury duty.

Misha Gerrick said...

Interesting! I'm definitely going to play around now. :-) See you when you're back.

Igneel21 said...

man i would love to see or do something tribunal related but there's no such thing in my country :(

Mark said...

Wow, neat stats:) I actually used to work near the building where they did all that scanning...it didn't look too fun;)

Lynda R Young as Elle Cardy said...

Carol, Nothing so far... but I do think it would be an interesting experience.

CherylAnne, hehe, enjoy the distraction ;)

Melissa, nope, I haven't even been questioned yet. Eek, no computer and phone? nooooooooooooooo!! ;)

Jamie, enjoy

Medeia, that's what I'm hoping

Amie, lucky you! And yes I think it would be fascinating too.

Will, yeah, the thing about teen is interesting isn't it.

Cynthia, hahaha yeah...sorry about that ;)

Misha, have fun

Tony, oh that's interesting.

Mark, haha yeah I've done some scanning in the past as well and you are right: it's not fun ;)

Jeff Beesler said...

I miss throve. I want to bring it back! Going to campaign to bring throve into the 21st century!

Aritha Vermeulen said...

Interesting.