Words and Trends

A tweet of mine aroused great interest. I was checking my writing on "physical law". I checked the term—and looked at the more general use of "law". Courtesy of Ngram, at the top, the use of "law" in British English over the last 150 years. At the bottom, the use of "law" in American English over the same time period. This obviously correlates with social and political trends. Or try, for instance, "suicide". The correlation is striking: people fall silent about suicide as the suicide rate soars. OBSERVATION: I have suggested previously that such trends could make powerful predictions (if one had a computer to crunch the numbers).