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This is pretty cool.

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 16:42 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=gangsta,gangster&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1900&year_end=2008

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 16:42 (fifteen years ago)

NY Times discusses.

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 16:50 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=zounds,jeez&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1900&year_end=2008

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 16:52 (fifteen years ago)

haha. a long period there when no one quite knew what word to use to expressed the jeez/zounds sentiment.

Antoine Bugleboy (Merdeyeux), Friday, 17 December 2010 16:57 (fifteen years ago)

express*

Antoine Bugleboy (Merdeyeux), Friday, 17 December 2010 16:57 (fifteen years ago)

I like that "zounds" is on the upswing, though!

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 16:59 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=never,gonna,+give,you,up&year_start=1500&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=0

if nothing else this thread will result in some great display names (Edward III), Friday, 17 December 2010 17:57 (fifteen years ago)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/history_of_fbombs.jpg

if nothing else this thread will result in some great display names (Edward III), Friday, 17 December 2010 17:58 (fifteen years ago)

damn ilx image smashing

if nothing else this thread will result in some great display names (Edward III), Friday, 17 December 2010 17:58 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=dawg&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

if nothing else this thread will result in some great display names (Edward III), Friday, 17 December 2010 17:59 (fifteen years ago)

^Try setting your end date on that one to 2008.

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:05 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=racist,sexist&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:06 (fifteen years ago)

good lord, we're exceeding 1940s level of dawgitude

if nothing else this thread will result in some great display names (Edward III), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:06 (fifteen years ago)

this is so cool and wow what a development for corpus linguistics !!

ergonomically chromium plated fish slice (La Lechera), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:07 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=lucifer,satan&corpus=0&smoothing=4&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:09 (fifteen years ago)

Shit, I forgot to capitalize Lucifer and Satan, the graph actually looks like this:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=Lucifer,Satan&corpus=0&smoothing=4&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:10 (fifteen years ago)

i'll confess that the first thing i tried was 'fuck' too. interesting that it died between 1800 and 1820, anyone know why that was?

Antoine Bugleboy (Merdeyeux), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:13 (fifteen years ago)

untimely death of king fuck IV

if nothing else this thread will result in some great display names (Edward III), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:19 (fifteen years ago)

:''(.

Antoine Bugleboy (Merdeyeux), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:22 (fifteen years ago)

is that the emoticon for half-choctaw?

if nothing else this thread will result in some great display names (Edward III), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:23 (fifteen years ago)

this thing is too awesome

several interesting cans of chili (askance johnson), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:35 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=ale,lager,beer&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

several interesting cans of chili (askance johnson), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:36 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=elvis,beatles&year_start=1960&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

전승 Complete Victory (in Battle) (NotEnough), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:43 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=elvis,beatles&year_start=1960&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

전승 Complete Victory (in Battle) (NotEnough), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:43 (fifteen years ago)

How are you guys doing that?

전승 Complete Victory (in Battle) (NotEnough), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:44 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=elvis,beatles&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1960&year_end=2000

전승 Complete Victory (in Battle) (NotEnough), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:45 (fifteen years ago)

gotcha!

전승 Complete Victory (in Battle) (NotEnough), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:45 (fifteen years ago)

aaah, that makes more sense.

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=Elvis,Beatles&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1960&year_end=2000

전승 Complete Victory (in Battle) (NotEnough), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:46 (fifteen years ago)

http://i52.tinypic.com/oh5mkj.jpg

zvookster, Friday, 17 December 2010 18:49 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=yikes,yipes&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

moiré eel (a passing spacecadet), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:54 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=internet&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
early 1900's internet?

I spilled, saucer-eyed, into the Tonetta fanclub underground. (forksclovetofu), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:56 (fifteen years ago)

That seems strange.

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=groovy&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1950&year_end=2008

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:57 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=heroin,cocaine,marijuana&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

several interesting cans of chili (askance johnson), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:58 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=%22It%20was%20the%20best%20of%20times%22&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000

Does that mean that this phrase has appeared in NO BOOKS EVER?

전승 Complete Victory (in Battle) (NotEnough), Friday, 17 December 2010 18:59 (fifteen years ago)

I don't think it takes phrases longer than five words.
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=chasing%20the%20dragon&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

Øystein, Friday, 17 December 2010 19:00 (fifteen years ago)

Did a pre-1950 search for "internet" on Google Books and got a lot of results - a handful of date errors, but mainly a variety of OCR cockups (internal, internat., interest, etc)

moiré eel (a passing spacecadet), Friday, 17 December 2010 19:01 (fifteen years ago)

every word i'm trying takes a measurable jump in 1960... wonder if that's the words i'm picking or something about how this thing works...

goole, Friday, 17 December 2010 19:01 (fifteen years ago)

No 60s jump here!
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=fie&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

Øystein, Friday, 17 December 2010 19:02 (fifteen years ago)

Most words I try have a big jump at the end of the graph, which I guess is because they have a lot more post-2005 books scanned than pre-2005, and the y value is as a % of the corpus rather than a % of the content from that year. Dunno if something similar would be true for 1960, though.

moiré eel (a passing spacecadet), Friday, 17 December 2010 19:03 (fifteen years ago)

Huh, it was well past its prime in 1800:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=fie&year_start=1600&year_end=1850&corpus=0&smoothing=3

Øystein, Friday, 17 December 2010 19:03 (fifteen years ago)

(That was all speculation - I don't know how the scale works at all.)

moiré eel (a passing spacecadet), Friday, 17 December 2010 19:03 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=avast&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

or here!

xps

goole, Friday, 17 December 2010 19:04 (fifteen years ago)

wo 1600? how far back does this thing go?

goole, Friday, 17 December 2010 19:04 (fifteen years ago)

Many more books are published in modern years. Doesn't this skew the results?

It would if we didn't normalize by the number of books published in each year.

fucking smartasses over here

goole, Friday, 17 December 2010 19:05 (fifteen years ago)

poor teddy

several interesting cans of chili (askance johnson), Friday, 17 December 2010 19:06 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=culture,Sid%20Meier

max, Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:27 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=cigar,cigarette&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

the journey you take with bob ross (askance johnson), Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:32 (fifteen years ago)

Does nobody else find it odd that Odysseus has a massive spike in popularity just after Ulysses is published? Surely you would expect, uh, Ulysses to be mentioned more in that period. Unless maybe people starting using the variant in order to not confuse people?

emil.y, Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:33 (fifteen years ago)

joke, jest

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=joke%2Cjest&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

goole, Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:36 (fifteen years ago)

poker crushes all those

here's blackjack added, from 1800

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=blackjack%2Ccanasta%2Cpinochle%2Ceuchre%2Crummy&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

so euchre was the game of the gilded age?

goole, Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:50 (fifteen years ago)

bear arms, free speech

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=bear+arms%2Cfree+speech&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

goole, Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:52 (fifteen years ago)

nice!

Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:53 (fifteen years ago)

not sure what to make of this:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=church%20and%20state,Church%20and%20State&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000

Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:54 (fifteen years ago)

poker crushes all those

Yeah. Also didn't include it because of potential false positives.

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Tuesday, 21 December 2010 18:58 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=Easter,Christmas&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1750&year_end=2000

the journey you take with bob ross (askance johnson), Tuesday, 21 December 2010 19:02 (fifteen years ago)

another lol 50's one:

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=plead+the+Fifth&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

goole, Tuesday, 21 December 2010 19:09 (fifteen years ago)

Did not realize that Ritalin was that old.

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Tuesday, 21 December 2010 19:11 (fifteen years ago)

Poor Xanax.

the journey you take with bob ross (askance johnson), Tuesday, 21 December 2010 19:18 (fifteen years ago)

I don't know why food and drink are so interesting to me:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=ranch%20dressing,Italian%20dressing,Russian%20dressing,balsamic%20vinaigrette&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1900&year_end=2008

Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Wednesday, 22 December 2010 01:34 (fifteen years ago)

http://i55.tinypic.com/25a0xgy.png

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:47 (fifteen years ago)

http://i51.tinypic.com/20acpk6.png

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:48 (fifteen years ago)

http://i54.tinypic.com/o7lqn6.png

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:51 (fifteen years ago)

http://i52.tinypic.com/20zqv5j.png

(passenger pigeons went extinct in the wild in 1900 and in captivity in 1914)

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 17:55 (fifteen years ago)

Everyone who'd learned it kinda forgot the right spelling after 2001 ?

StanM, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:00 (fifteen years ago)

eh? it looks to me that people just used the word less and less (whether properly or improperly spelled) after the millennium.

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:02 (fifteen years ago)

http://i51.tinypic.com/t55cnm.png

hmm

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:05 (fifteen years ago)

Yeah, of course, you're totally right - misread that completely. Xpost. :-(

StanM, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:06 (fifteen years ago)

British English:
http://i53.tinypic.com/30k6e0i.png

American English:
http://i51.tinypic.com/259zofm.png

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:20 (fifteen years ago)

http://i55.tinypic.com/34rb0jc.png

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:25 (fifteen years ago)

American English:
http://i52.tinypic.com/ostqnc.png

15 crossovers? it's hard to count.

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:43 (fifteen years ago)

http://i51.tinypic.com/2i1i98j.png

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:50 (fifteen years ago)

That reminds me how 50s-60s British children's books often have "hullo" instead. British English:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=Hello,Hallo,Hullo&corpus=6&smoothing=3&year_start=1780&year_end=2008

(capitalised it because it gives higher %s that way. "Hi" dwarves any of them when I did not expect it to be used at all as a greeting in UK books printed pre-1970; going to assume that's a weird glitch of OCR or use as abbreviation and not include it.)

xpost

bauble metropolis (a passing spacecadet), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 18:56 (fifteen years ago)

for a while (~1750 to 1810 in Britain), "Halloo" was more common than any of those. British dandies just don't shout out to alert their hounds of a fox the way they used to, *sigh*.

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 19:06 (fifteen years ago)

I have not figured out the "hi" thing, but I did get totally distracted by wanting to read this book:
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/d3/d4/05537220eca0b2baab818010.L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

(note author's name!)

bauble metropolis (a passing spacecadet), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 19:10 (fifteen years ago)

xpost - according to etymonline, "Hi" wasn't used as a greeting until the 1860s, and it originated in America. you're probably right about OCR errors. among other things, the Roman numeral III seems to confuse the machine an awful lot.

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 19:12 (fifteen years ago)

Q. How to make a success of your teen years?
A. Gay Head

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 19:13 (fifteen years ago)

http://i51.tinypic.com/2chkz7l.jpg

WANT

i probably busted a nut when i was tossing her cookie salad (unregistered), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 19:18 (fifteen years ago)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=irony%2Cironic&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1840&year_end=2008
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=ironic+appreciation&year_start=1840&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3

was just gently thinking abt how in the late 90s I kept reading magazines proclaiming the 90s the decade of irony, and from here the 90s looks pretty earnest, as I guess even the most deadpan snark of the 00s will in another few years - don't really know what the graph does to this thought, but here it is anyhow

bauble metropolis (a passing spacecadet), Sunday, 2 January 2011 14:52 (fifteen years ago)

seven months pass...

not exactly on topic - this is as close as i could find to a google books thread - but, does anyone use google books a lot? i find it so useful, in being able to search through a book to find a specific passage i remember, or maybe preview something, or just as a go-to source for info. and yesterday i noticed it had a whole 'add to library' thing that allows you to do the kinda goodreads-y thing of making a list of what you're reading/going to read &c. i looked up a deleuze book, inspired/shamed by the thread, and it comes up with a list of 'favorite passages' you can jump into. i wondered if anyone used it - i don't know that it has the emphasis on being a kinda personality-ish community thing in the way similar sites do but it seems like such a useful resource.

(oboe interlude) (schlump), Thursday, 4 August 2011 10:00 (fourteen years ago)

eight months pass...

I use it for work all the time. It's great.

Here's an Ngram I found interesting:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/chart?content=Fela%20Kuti%2CFela%20Ransome%20Kuti%2CFela%20Anikulapo%20Kuti&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1965&year_end=2008

sockless in moccasins (jaymc), Friday, 20 April 2012 17:22 (fourteen years ago)

Though Quisling wins out when we go for just the surnames ...
http://books.google.com/ngrams/chart?content=Hamsun%2CQuisling&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1900&year_end=2000

Øystein, Friday, 20 April 2012 17:53 (fourteen years ago)

six months pass...

It lets do you extra stuff now, like plot US against UK usage.

1969: the year that Jesus became bigger in America than Britain:

http://i.imgur.com/vlmhF.png

Alba, Sunday, 21 October 2012 19:53 (thirteen years ago)

Waaaay up there, the tw-decade surge in the use of "lucifer" in the mid-nineteenth century was most likely a byproduct of the term "lucifer matches".

Aimless, Sunday, 21 October 2012 20:17 (thirteen years ago)

huh.

BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 21 October 2012 20:34 (thirteen years ago)

"lucifer" vs "satan" was plotted back near the start of this thread, by:

― Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Friday, December 17, 2010 10:09 AM (1 year ago)

When self-striking sulpher-phosphorus matches were first invented they were sometimes called "swedish matches", but far more often were called "lucifer matches", until they became less of a novelty and were simply referred to as "matches".

Aimless, Sunday, 21 October 2012 20:43 (thirteen years ago)

thirteen years pass...

Um...

There are three kinds of view on google books: full view, snippet view and preview view. Full view is only for public domain books. For in copyright works, you have preview and snippet. Preview lets you see some full pages while snippet view lets you see a chunk and some sentences.

There was some change a month ago that knocked out a lot of books from search, and I am not entirely sure what that change was. But a few days ago they removed ALL search functions for any books with previews, which are disproportionately modern books. This has made Google Books effectively useless. Snippet view remains and is still searchable.

Bizarrely, if you check the individual books that used to have search function enabled - the previews are still there! You can read full pages! However, the search/OCR is completely turned off. You can search a word while staring at a page that has that word and it will tell you 0 results. They also did not turn off OCR/search for snippet view AND completely locked books.

I think this is extremely terrible as it makes finding books to buy extremely difficult. It also clearly isn't for copyright, as the previews are still there. I have no clue why they did this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1qn1hk1/google_has_seemingly_entirely_removed_search/

Venus of Willendorf on Golf (jaymc), Monday, 26 January 2026 21:16 (three months ago)

I search on Google Books pretty much every day for work. This would be a huge blow.

Venus of Willendorf on Golf (jaymc), Monday, 26 January 2026 21:17 (three months ago)


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