Who/m

From Fowler's Modern English Usage: Who is used as a relative pronoun (The Woman who saw you) and as an interrogative (who is there?), and whom is, formally, its objective form (The woman whom you say / Whom did you see?). In all these uses who (or whom) refers to a person or to several people, but as a relative pronoun who can informally refer to an animal or to an organization regarded in terms of its members (The committee, who meet on Friday,...) 

It is no surprise to see that whom is on the decline. Even though it is still a prescriptive rule, many of us don't use it anymore. For this particular project I took a look at some common sentences where who and whom are commonly misused.  

[do] [p*] [v*]

Whom Globwe Coha

Who Globwe Coha

This first graph shows the increase of who versus whom in the past 200 years. Other than a few random dips, the usage of who over time has increased. The graph below shows the words in relation to each other.You can see again that there has been a drop in the use of whom and a huge increase in the use of who.

Looking at Globwe, you can see that Sri Lanka has the highest hits per million in usage of 'whom'. This is because their usage of English is trying to be more of a 'correct' usage, while those who have English as a native language we are more adept to changing our language.

[have] [p*] [v*]

Whom Globwe Coha

Who Globwe Coha

This graph shows similarities to the use with 'do' with a constant increase of the use of who in relation to whom. Once who rises close to 100% usage, it has a steady life moving back and forth between 82%-98% usage. It is interesting to note that once whom because almost completely died out, it has some of the lowest percentage of usage between the three uses of whom we looked at.

[be] [p*] [v*]

Whom Globwe Coha BNC vs COCA

Who Globwe Coha BNC vs COCA

Finally the words with 'be' also show an increase of who in relation to whom. Who has had a harder and slower climb to the top, but the bottom graph shows the least amount of uses of whom among the three uses.

One would assume that the British would use whom more so than American English because of the poshness and prestige that it sounds like, however looking at this graph between BNC and COCA usage of who and whom (I was unable to get the corpora to work with the side by side comparisons, which is why there aren't any links to any of the other searches) you can see that the British Corpus has even less hits for whom than COCA.

Overall these findings didn't offer anything new than what we already knew. Whom has been on the downword spiral for quite a while, being replaced completely by who. There is no reviving it back to life, as much as some prescriptivists try to keep it up. 

U vs A

It has been a dilemma faced by many speakers and writer of the English language...is it drank or drunk? I took a look at the differences between a couple key words to see if it is more common for us to use 'a' or 'u' to describe the past. 

This compares the use of drunk to drank. I'm including the two links (drank drunk) to show that there isn't that much of a decrease in drank (with only about 10 more hits per million words).

Sprung has decreased in use compared to sprang, but appears to be growing again in the last couple of decades.

"You sunk my battleship!" Apparently isn't used as often now as it used to be. However, sank as a word in general is also on the decline. 

Shrinking clothes may not be your biggest worry, but if you did have to talk about it it's more likely that you would use the word shrank to explain them. 

Apparently we didn't notice bad smells as often as we do now until the 1910s (COHA had very little data until then). When we describe something with a bad smell now a days, we are most likely to use the word stank.

Either you run the day or the day runs you. -Jim Rohn

We've been running since the dawn of time, either for survival or enjoyment. But the word run was changed throughout the years and can now mean many other things than just the act of moving our legs really fast. If you look at the word net search for run, you can see that there are many different meanings of this word today. I decided to look at some of these different meanings and to look at different ways you can see how it has changed.

Verb

Taking a look a the word run as a verb, COHA shows an increase. This is happening, presumably, because of the increase of meanings to the word (not necessarily that we're running more).

The first instance of run as a verb with the definition: "To go with quick steps on alternate feet, never having both or (in the case of animals) all feet on the ground at the same time; to make one's way or cover ground in this manner" shows up in the OED in Old English, while the first with a recorded date is around 1225.

The image of someone moving fast when running has spread the meaning to multiple other meanings.

Some people are known for "runing their mouths". The OED places the first usage of this type of 'run' circa 1425 in the phrase "His large tonge..To suffren..to renne out of les..doth he..that spoken hath so large."  COHA showed no strings on any of the searches I did, but Google Books shows an increase when using the pronouns his, her, and their. I also did a search of run * mouth to compare, and it shows a nicer curve of an increase.

One of the more common ways 'run' has changed as a verb is its use it the sentence "He's running for mayor". I took a look at the usage of [pp*] [run] for [nn*] and compared the usage between 1900-2000 and 1810-1890.  You can see that common nouns, like actual offices, are more in use today than they were during the 1800s.

Not only animate objects can run. I looked at the word run in the terms of liquid running in COHA and you can see a slow (and rocky) increase through the years (interesting note, the peaks focus around years of wars). You can also see a common use of what types of liquids are around the word 'run'.

That is only a small glimpse into the world of the verb run. If you take a look at the words surrounding the verb run, you notice that the most common uses involve running something (with "to run the") and the original verb definition with "to run away", and "to run ."

Finally, I looked at the most common collocates surrounding the verb run. The most common adjectives that prefix the verb run are able, ready, and little. The most common adjectives that come after the verb run are wild, high, and little.

Noun

Run as a noun shows a similar increase in COHA as it did as a verb. Word net explains that many different meanings for the word run as a noun, including trials, races, and unrestricted use. You can see the most commonly used adjectives in COHA separated by the years .

Another interesting use of the word run as a noun is in the string run of the [nn*]. As you can see, it has a steady increase of this meaning, unrestricted freedom. Also, taking a look at the most common collocates surrounding run of the [nn*] you can see that there is a shift in what people have control of (today: Run of the season/game, past: run of the ship).

You can also score runs in different sporting. If this seems a little old school it appears to be not as common as it ones was. There were no hits in COHA for this term, but Google Books shows a decrease of the usage [pp*] [score] a run.