To Trend

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Grant Barrett wrote:

> An interesting appearance of "trend" as a verb. I wonder if there's some
> conflation with "to tend (toward something."
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/10/16/campaign.wrap/index.html
>
> "Many Republicans in the state believe Clinton has fallen out of favor
> enough at home to give Bush an opportunity there. Still a fundamentally
> Democratic state, Arkansas has trended Republican recently. It has a GOP
> governor and senator, and two of its four House seats are Republican-held."

Essentially this usage of "trend" is recorded in OED with quotations going
back to 1863.  It's been big in business/economics lingo for decades.

Fred


Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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