Amusing discoveries with google ngrams

[avacon]

I was playing with google ngrams (http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/) and found a few interesting bits.

First is the "meep" anomaly from which you would think that there was much meeping in 1800. Alas, this is due to the way "sheep" was ligatured back then (so "sheep" would be "ſheep") and

Comments

[crs]

I liked comparing "someone" and "some one".

[avacon]

ksushis pointed out "we shall" vs "we will"

[shaggy_man]

Check out what's happened to the incidence of the phrases "he or she" and "his or her" since around 1970.

[avacon]

It looks like the curve of meep's decline matches the decline in usage of the "long s". (Thanks to Manolis for pointing this out.)

[angerona]

I like “in want” vs. “in need”

[lokiect]

frappe vs milkshake, if you're feeling native ;9