Welcome to the 21st century.

Google has now digitized and cataloged millions of books from as far back as the 16th century. Take that, and mix in some university researchers desperate for a thesis, and you get Google’s N-Gram tool.

Essentially, you can type in any series of words or phrases, separated by commas, and Google will graph the frequency with which those words appeared in literature over the ages.

For instance, I wondered about “sneaked” and “snuck.” Which is correct? When did the wrong one appear and how popular is it? Well, easy enough: Click to see the results! Turns out, “sneaked” is correct, but “snuck” has been gradually sneaking up on it since the 1920’s. As a side note, “sneaked” shows a huge spike during and after WWII. Seems we got all interested in sneaking during the war.

Here are some more search ideas:
Who is more popular? Frodo, or Harry Potter?
When did the desktop start to lose out to the laptop?
When did “crap” become more popular than “poop”? (Try adding that other 4-letter scatological, word for a real surprise.)

If you’re interested and have 15 minutes to burn, here’s the video of the researchers describing their project at TED. (Clicky clicky)