I’ve been having a bit more fun with the Google Ngram Viewer (previously). A reminder that these graphs show how much these phrases have appeared in published works over time. They are case-sensitive and I’ve used the English corpus.

The Americanisation of English

The big monsters

Massive spike in interest from the 70’s onwards. Not much love for werewolves.

galactic empire, men from Mars, solar sails, ray gun, alien invasion

faster than light, time travel, invisible man

Religion vs. education

Christmas, Santa, Easter

It’s curious how ‘Santa’ seems to have regular spikes of interest every few decades (1850, 1910, 1950, 1970-ish). Boom periods?