Posts filed under ‘Word usage history’
Track the usage history of favourite words
When did your forename first appear in English literature? How long have people used words like ‘poster’, ‘tricycle’ or ‘Dickensian? Which is older: ‘sofa’ or ‘settee’?
Find out with this cool new tool from Google:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph
Key in any word. You get a graph that plots its usage between the years 1500 and 2008, based on the contents of Google Books.
What startling discoveries have you made with your favourite words?
