#Word usage trends full#

But the new database gets around that problem: It's just a collection of words and phrases, stripped of all context except the date in which they appeared. Many of these books are covered by copyright, and publishers aren't letting people read them online. (the Hollywood Ten, blacklisted in 1947).' Trotsky), China (Tiananmen Square) and the U.S. (In contrast, from 1946-1954, 'Marc Chagall' appears nearly 100 times in the German corpus.) Such examples are found in many countries, including Russia (e.g.

#Word usage trends full#

But in German, the artist’s popularity decreases, reaching a nadir from 1936-1944, when his full name appears only once. In both languages, there is a rapid ascent starting in the late 1910s (when Chagall was in his early 30s). For instance, Nazi censorship of the Jewish artist Marc Chagall is evident by comparing the frequency of 'Marc Chagall' in English and in German books. 'Suppression - of a person, or an idea - leaves quantifiable fingerprints.

Alas, even at their peak, mathematicians tend not to be appreciated by the public.' Physicists and biologists eventually reached a similar level of fame as actors, but it took them far longer. Politicians did not become famous until their 50s, when, upon being elected President of the United States, they rapidly rose to become the most famous of the groups. The writers became famous about a decade after the actors, but rose for longer and to a much higher peak. Actors tend to become famous earliest, at around 30. 'Occupational choices affect the rise to fame. By language:Īt a reasonable rate of 200 words per minute, reading just the entries from the year 2000 would take 80 years, without interruptions for food or sleep. That resulted in more than 500 billion words. The study used 5,195,769 digitized books, or about 4 percent of all books ever published.