Little Britain

Little Britain has its long catalogue[1] of city wonders, which its inhabitants consider the wonders of the world: such as the great bell of St. Paul's, which sours all the beer when it tolls; the figures that
strike the hours at St. Dunstan's clock; the Monument; the lions in the Tower; and the wooden giants in Guildhall. They still believe in dreams and fortune-telling, and an old woman that lives in Bull-and-Mouth Street makes a tolerable[2] subsistence by detecting stolen goods, and promising the girls good husbands. They are apt[3] to be rendered uncomfortable by comets and eclipses; and if a dog howls dolefully[4] at night, it is looked upon[5] as a sure sign of a death in the place. There are even many ghost stories current, particularly concerning the old mansion-houses; in several of which it is said strange sights are sometimes seen[6]. Lords and ladies, the former in full bottomed wigs, hanging sleeves, and swords, the latter in lappets[7], stays, hoops and brocade, have been seen[8] walking up and down the great waste chambers, on moonlight nights; and are supposed to be the shades of the ancient proprietors in their court-dresses.
 Little Britain has likewise its sages and great men. One of the most important of the former is a tall, dry old gentleman, of the name of Skryme, who keeps a small apothecary's shop. He has a cadaverous[9] countenance[10], full of cavities and projections; with a brown circle round each eye, like a pair of horned spectacles[11]. He is much thought[12] of by the old women, who consider him a kind of conjurer, because he has two of three stuffed alligators hanging up in his shop, and several snakes in bottles. He is a great reader[13] of almanacs and newspapers, and is much given to pore over alarming accounts of plots[14], conspiracies, fires, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions; which last phenomena he considers as signs of the times. He has always some dismal tale of the kind to deal out to his customers, with their doses; and thus at the same time puts both soul and body into an uproar. He is a great believer in omens and predictions; and has the prophecies of Robert Nixon and Mother Shipton by heart[15]. No man can make so much out of an eclipse, or even an unusually dark day; and he shook the tail of the last comet over the heads of his customers and disciples until they were nearly frightened out of their wits. He has lately got hold[16] of a popular legend or prophecy, on which[17] he has been unusually eloquent. There has been a saying current among the ancient sibyls, who treasure up these things, that when the grasshopper on the top of the Exchange shook hands with the dragon on the top of Bow Church Steeple, fearful events would take place. This strange conjunction, it seems, has as strangely come to pass. The same architect has been engaged lately on the repairs of the cupola of the Exchange, and the steeple of Bow church; and, fearful to relate, the dragon and the grasshopper actually lie, cheek by jole[18], in the yard of his workshop[19].

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Lexical

[2] Tolerable

[7] Lappets

[9] Cadaverous

[10] Countenance

[4] Dolefully

[3] apt

[11] spectacles

Syntax

[6] [n*] are sometimes [v*] [list]

[8] Have been [v*]

[12] Much [v*]

[13] Great [n*]

[5] It is looked upon vs. it is seen

[17] On which [p*]

[19] [n*] of [app*] [n*]

Function words

[16] Got hold vs gotten hold

Semantic

[14] Plot as a noun

Morphological

spelling

[1] catalogue vs. catalog
[17] Jole vs. jowl


false hits

[15] Has…by heart = memorized. Only one usage.

Father in Heaven

I have grown up a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I have spent many days listening to the words of the Prophet, his counselors, and those that preside in the church. They've always been really special in my life, so being able to study those words in a linguistic sense made me really happy.

I decided to take a look at the words that we use to describe our Heavenly Father. There is a lot that I know about Jesus Christ, but because our Heavenly Father is such a sacred being, there is little that I fully know about him that I haven't learned through Jesus' example. I decide to take this opportunity to see the many different words that have been used to describe our Heavenly Father.

Heavenly Father 

This one seems the most common to me, and if you look at the graph you can see why. 

I started off with this word and noticed that it had peaked significantly this past decade. Did that mean that we didn't talk about our Heavenly Father before now? I hypothesized that the answer to this is no, but that we had different words to use to describe him.

Father in Heaven

Even though it is only a slight variance to the phrasing above, it still shows a different in usage. Interestingly enough, both of them were on the rise until they dropped off in this last couple of conference.

God

To me, this is a little more harsh than Heavenly Father. It is still a common phrase, but wouldn't be the first word that I would go to. There is a nice curve around the usage of God in General Conference in tokens, but if you go to the corpus search you notice that it is in the decline in the usage per million.

Elohim

This isn't a very common name for our Heavenly Father in day to day speech, but I wanted to know what the usage would be in general conference. It was very infrequent both in tokens and in per million. The highest token was only 12 uses in one conference.

Eternal Father

This shows a similar graph to God, and if you look at the corpus you can see that the usage is slightly declining. The similarities between the two could be because of the phrase God the Eternal Father; when looking at the examples there were very few where God and Eternal Father weren't collocates.

Going by these findings, I would say that Heavenly Father is the more modern name to reference our Heavenly Father. It brings about the kindness that we associate with our Father in Heaven. 

Outside the Church

I wanted to take a look at the uses of God and Heavenly Father outside of the church, so I ran both of them in Coca (God, Heavenly Father). The graphs below show the usage of both of those words by Genre and Year.

It was interesting to see that while Fiction and Magazine have the highest usage of God, Academic had a decently high usage as well.

This is not surprising in the fact that God is less in use now then it use to be. The usage is high compared to Heavenly Father in the past couple of years. Heavenly Father peaks in Spoken and Fiction but is really low in the other three genres. 

By year, Heavenly Father has dropped in usage since 1995-1999. When I think of Heavenly Father, it seems like a more term used within the church; not something that would be used unless you were a member. 

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.

Being drunk: Slang and idioms of drunkenness.

Alcohol has been around for ages, and many terms have popped up to help explain the state of being drunk. I took a look at some of the most common slang terms for being drunk and see where they sit in the history of the american language.

*Most of the queries were specialized to get the best results for each results. 

Word	GB	COCA	First occurrence (COHA) (with previous literal meaning)
[be] blitzed	1354	20	1978: The man was blitzed completely. He sat. "Get him a glass," Danny told Tiffany.
He [be] wasted	994	17	1999: "told you about what?" Leo said. He was wasted."
[be] tipsy	8073	21	1890: Frank now judged, from the harsh laugh and the excited manner of the intruder, that his visitor was tipsy.
Three sheets to the wind	1232	16	1928: An Irishman about  three sheets to the wind was on his way home.
[be] tanked up	88	4	1921: He wouldn't think o' goin' out 'less he was tanked up, on time er not on time
*he [be] smashed	786	4	2004: ..being under the table at banquets because he was smashed
*he [be] sloshed	58	2	1965: And she hadn't giggled, as he explained to me later, when she stated he was sloshed.
he [be] plastered	64	6	1981: He was plastered again, and determined not to let the party end
He [be] buzzed	77	5	1985: he was astonished to discover he was buzzed.
Hosed	0	0	Wasn't available in any of the corpora, so may be too new.

After studying all these terms, I've noticed that a lot of them are in relation to destruction. Wasted and smashed had multiple uses to mean destruction before it switched to being drunk. Blitzed started in the 1940s, with the German blitzing on London, and transitioned quickly to being drunk. This is interesting to note because while being drunk is increasingly becoming a common past time, we still consider it a destructive act. 

A Girl Should be Two Things: Classy and Fabulous.

Coco Chanel said it best. Women's clothing has changed through the years. New words have been added, some taken away as the styles have changed. I'm going to use the corpus to take a look at these changes.

Every Day Clothes

Skirt

As one of the most critical articles in a women's closet, I took a look at the word 'skirt'. As you look at the chart of the word from 1810-2000 (COHA), you notice a definite increase of the word. It can be assumed that while there were skirts dresses were most popular for a while, which can be seen in the chart for dress (lower down on the page). This same pattern is seen in other corpora (Google Books), with an increase of the word and a peak in the 1940s.

A look at collocates shows the type of skirts that have been worn (collocates). There are many ways to describe skirts today, but in the past words like "woolen" "coarse" "fringed" and "silken" were used.

An interesting note, the mini skirt was a popular change in the type of dress worn by women, has a steady use from the 1960s-1990s, and a sudden increase in the 2000s (COHA).

Dress

A dress is another stable in the women's closet has seen almost the opposite change as skirts have (COHA). While constantly staying in the high usage of the language it has seen a slight decrease in the past couple of decades. Google books agrees with this, and confirms that while skirt has raised a bit the past little bit, dress and decreased in use (Google Books)

The collocates show many of the same words used to describe dress as they did skirts, with "white" being the most common instead of "black" (collocates). 

Blouse 

We commonly think of a blouse as being an article of women's clothing. A look at some examples in the corpus shows that that wasn't always so, but that the popularity of this article of clothing didn't rise until women started to wear it (COHA). Google Books appears to have similar results (Google Books)

Descriptive collocates don't really start to appear until between 1910-1930 (collocates). 

Jeans

Jeans are another common article of clothing that were established by men before being worn by women. While looking at the corpus for the word "jeans" with "her" as a collocate, you can see that it begins in the 1940s with a increase up until today (COHA). Google Books won't show a chart, but the list give similar results, but having jeans with the "her" collocate start in the 1930s (Google Books)

Outerwear

Blazer

Again, another article worn by men but eventually used by a women. If you do just a search for blazer in coha, you will see that the increase doesn't happen until the article is worn by both men and women (COHA, with a complimenting search for blazer with her as a collocate here). Google Books shows a steady increase of the word as a whole (Google Books)

Peacoat

While not extremely common, I thought this was an interesting article of clothing to look at, as it is yet another example of men's style creeping into women's style. Coha gives a minimal use of this word until the 2000s, where it jumps up, and not so coincidentally has most use of the word for a women's article of clothing (COHA). Google Books again shows the exact same pattern, with the huge increase in the 2000s (Google Book)

Scarves

Scarves are less used today for warmth then for style. A look at the collocates for this word show this, with the common words today being colors and designs, and words like woolen until rank 10 and heave not until 14 (collocates).

Footwear

Tights/Stockings

These words are almost interchangeable today, and even though the use of them has drastically dropped they show a sort of opposition in use. Tights rise up during the past couple of decades, while stockings had a high use and steadily dropped. (Coha: tights stockings)

Heels

As these are also parts of the feet, it was hard to look up what I wanted in the word heel. I used the collocates shoes and wear to get my results. If you look at these, you notice an increase and significant peak in the 1940s (interestingly enough the same thing as skirt) (coha: shoes wear)

Flats

It is easy to assume that women have been wearing flat shoes for a majority of their history. This is an example where we have needed to create a word for something we've already had because of the increase or newly creation of a word. With heels and pumps becoming increasingly popular, we needed a word that would explain a flat nice shoe. Coha shows that this is a new invention, only giving use in the 2000s (COHA). A deeper look into Coca shows that this has the most popularity in just the last couple of years (COCA).

Extras

Bikini

One can not have a discussion about women's clothing without talking about the bikini. It was named after the Bikini Island, and was seen as revolutionary as it was one of the first swimwear to show the navel. The corpora show the start of this and the increase of it as well (COHA). Modesty appears to have played a role in the popularity of the bikini as its biggest increase isn't until the 2000s. Bikini doesn't really appear in Google Books until the 1950s, and again doesn't increase until the 2000s (Google Books)

Tankini

As the use of bikinis rose, so did other forms of swimsuits. The tankini became a more modest form of the two piece bikini, and has been used in its place by many people. Coca shows that this isn't a necessarily serious word, and can mostly be found in spoken and magazine genres (COCA).Tankini doesn't show up until the 2000s in Google Books, just as it was in Coha (Google Books).

Necklace

Necklaces are common accessories with all women's outfits. They have been in popular use through the ages, as seen in coha. It has had a rocky lifespan, dropping in the 60s and 70s to rise again at an all time high during this last decade (COHA). The use of the necklace seems to correlate with when women were prosperous enough to have fine jewelry.

Using the collocates in coha, you can see that longer necklaces are in style now, as they were in the 1900s and the 1920s. (collocates). It also shows that precious gems were commonly used in necklaces, but aren't anymore.

Earring

This is another common accessory, one that I assumed had been worn for many decades. Coha shows that there was some but minimal use until the 1940s, where it has mostly continued in growth.(COHA). Google Books doesn't show a huge increase in the use of earrings until the 1970s, but it has increased ever since then. (Google Book)