[Corpora-List] the ebb and flow of inclusion of words in OED?

[Ted Pedersen]

Greetings all,

I was recently browsing through OED and discovered their timeline
feature. This shows a histogram that represents the number of words
added to English during 10, 50, or 100 year ranges, and I was a little
surprised by the shape. I think you can see this graph at the URL
below (assuming you have online access to OED).

http://www.oed.com/timelines

My verbal description won't be great, but there are local peaks around
the years 1400, 1600, and 1900, with valleys around 1500, 1750, and
the present day...while the overall trend is to have more and more
words included in the language, this graph suggests there are periods
where many words are included, and others where there are much fewer
included, and that this tends to alternate. The valley around 1750 is
quite dramatic as compared to the peaks of 1600 and 1850, for example.

What's going on here? Does this tell us something about English, or
about how OED was compiled, or ... ?

Thanks!
Ted
-- 
Ted Pedersen
http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse

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