Exciting news, word nerds! My copy editor and I got interested in the most widely used spelling of terra cotta, so I went to the Google Ngram Viewer to take a look. Here are the results:
For some reason terra cotta soared in popularity, peaking in 1910, and then plummeted. Terracotta started rising in 1945 and continued through 2000. In 1910, terra cotta was more popular by 7:1. Today, terracotta is more popular by 7:1.
Now, this is an interesting curiosity but obviously not worth posting about unless I have some larger point about the historical description of fired clay pottery. I don't. However, eagle-eyed readers will notice that these results go all the way through 2019. They used to go only through 2008. This is a huge improvement.
I don't know when this happened. Maybe last year. Maybe yesterday. But I didn't know about it before now, and it makes the fabulous Ngram Viewer even more fabulous. You're welcome.
THIS, This, this, Dear Mr. Drum is why I have loved you for all these many years! What a nerd, of the finest sort.
YES! Me too. +++
Clearly, Alphabet must be abusing its dominant position in ngrams to be able to do this.
Wait, Jabberwocking has a copy editor?
If it does, they do better than Mother Jones’.
Here's a good example where post-2008 data is telling. The graph for couch potato (which I had just looked up for a different comment) was nearly vertical since its introduction around 1980. But after 2008, it's fallen off 34%.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=couch+potato&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccouch%20potato%3B%2Cc0
Cool link. Never been there before. I looked up my two least favorite affectatious hipster words: whinge and bespoke. Interesting.
Winge and bespoke are both ordinary words in British English. I missed when they became hipster in America.
The first US use of ‘bespoke’ I recall hearing was in a radio promotion (WQXR classical) for a small furniture maker in NYC, about five years ago. Typical American usage would be ‘custom’ (adjective) or ‘custom-made’ for furniture and similar, ‘tailored’ or ‘tailor-made’ for clothing.
Huh, I always thought that what usually happens with a concept like this in English is that it goes from being written in two words, via hyphenated, to being written as one word, as it gets more and more commonly used and well-known. This seems to contradict that pattern. Is it the exception that confirms the rule, or is there no such pattern?
We refinanced last year down to 2.75% (0 points) - the discount lenders are trying to entice us to refinance again down to 2.5%, but at this point we don't really care - it's a real hassle. The current monthly payment is small enough that we can afford to turn the 30 year mortgage into a 15 year mortgage by making an extra principal payment each month, and if we need a little extra money for some home improvements we can skip a payment or two.
Terra cotta and terra-cotta seem to be used primarily for the building material. Terracotta seems to be favored for artistic uses (plaques, figures) and for the color. So the decline of terra cotta would reflect the decline of its architectural use, while the rise of terracotta would relate to its increased use in the arts and its acceptance as a color term. But to be sure I'd have to do a careful count.
The old building housing what was the Civil War Pension Building is a museum of Terra Cotta.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Building_Museum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_Buberl