linkrot

[Barnhart]

American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> writes:
>linkrot. The one-word version gets 26,000
>hits; the two-word version (link rot) gets 461,000 hits. A real
>winner of a term, I'd say -- I'm sure to use it with a certain
>frequency.

This computer term is interesting from several linguistic viewpoints.
However, I wonder at the number 461,000.  How many are totally irrelevant?
 Knowing the penchant for Google to produce duplicates, how many are the
same?  Don't get me wrong.  Google is an important resource.  But, for me
it is way down the scale for reliability and usefulness from more
traditional sources.

I have come to the conclusion that the fascination with Google numbers for
suggesting that a new word is "established" or at least "establishing"
derives from the ease with which impressive (i.e. large) numbers can be
generated.

Far more impressive is the status of the term in such traditional
resources as Nexis (in LexisNexis), where some conceptually manageable
(i.e. comprehendible) numbers may be generated.

word form  ....  major world papers  ...... all news (including blogs)

linkrot ...........7  ........................................... 37
link rot ..........5  ..........................................  88
link-rot ..........0  ..........................................    0

So, _link rot_ and its variant _linkrot_ are a significant new term, but
hardly by the weight suggested in the unmanageable numbers presented by
Google searching.

The newly-revealed resource at Brigham Young (americancorpus.org) shows 3
hits for _link rot_ but 0 for _linkrot_ and _link-rot_.

(See the "Working Knowledge" in _Dictionaries--Journal of the Dictionary
Society of North America_ [No. 28, 2007], p 131-162).  Here you will find
comments by myself, Orin Hargraves, Ian Brooks, John Simpson, Ieda Maria
Alves, Victoria Neufeldt, and Allan Metcalf.

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