Google’s new tool, the books ngram viewer, lets you track the relative occurrence of different words in lotsa books over a long period of time. We used it to gain insight (or whatever) into two phenomena:
UP and DOWN had their ups and downs over time. Note that they seemed to go up and down together! [UP is the blue line, DOWN is the red line. Click on the image to enlarge it.]
KIND OF and SORT OF sometimes kind of went together, and sometimes sort of didn’t. [KIND OF is the blue line, SORT OF is the red line. Click on the image to enlarge it.]
BONUS: Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) member Chris DiBona examined INDEED, INDUBITABLY and UNDOUBTEDLY.