30 Jan
2013
30 Jan
'13
5:41 a.m.
Ngram is the determining authority?
Not perfect, but it does the job. Suggest something better.
Ngram is neat but it may have it's own skew to
results. A new or 'in-vogue'
term like midicomputer may show up more in trade rags than published books
in comparison to more established terms like minicomputer and mainframe.
Yes, that is true, but certainly there will be some migration over the
years from the rags to the books, just as it happens today. Jargon
works its way into the general language, even in something as awful as
a Tom Clancey novel.
I Ngrammed 'midicomputer' and
'bubblehead' (a 'popular' term that I figure
wouldn't show up so much in published books) and they come up with
comparable percentages (at different times).
Try "apples" and "oranges".
--
Will