Google Ngram

A searchable index that maps the frequency of words found in every book that Google has ever scanned = 500 billion words, 5.2 million books in six lanuages.


For me, the most fascinating aspect is how it might be used in Cultural History.  The rise and fall of word use on such a massive scale will allow us to map the use of words and terms in History.  We can map the proliferation of concepts on a meta-scale and understand the Newness of our concept of Reality and History.

The word "History", after a small increase-decrease in use from 1650 to 1780, experienced a massive increase from the 1780's onwards... we talk about this era as being the "Enlightenment", but the term "Enlightenment" was only used from 1870's onwards. What does that mean for our understanding?

The concept "Renaissance", as can be seen below,  did not originate until the 1840's, well past the epoch we call The Renaissance.  Did Michaelangelo or Alberti think they were a part of something which we now call "Renaissance"?

Below:
- Steady decline in the use of  "God" from 1840's onwards.
- Beginning of the use of  "Renaissance" in 1850's. and the use of "Enlightenment" in 1900's = the Concept of both of these terms is relatively modern.
- Increase in "apocalypse" around the mid-1940's = Nuclear Fission?
- Steady increase of the use of the word "Modern" in the early 19th Century,
- Exponential Increase in the use of the word "Post Modern" in the 1950's
- Use of the word "Capitalism" from 1890 onwards. (Marx and Engels wrote Das Capital in 1867)

link to Google Labs N-gram Viewer.