chrissakes

[Victor Steinbok]

There is a somewhat bizarre IMO pattern in news archives. It may be an
artifact of technology or of changing reporting mores. But it's odd.
Perhaps someone can figure it out.

Go to Google News Archives (other sources may work too, but Google has a
nice chart with theirs). Search for "chrissakes".

To describe the chart in detail, there is one hit from the 1930s, a
handful in late 1967, 68, 69; then flat in the 1970s, NONE in 1980, them
gradually rising, peaking in 2006, now declining again.

Even taken by itself, this an odd distribution. What's with the hole in
1980?? and why decline since 2006?

But the compare it to the "full" "Christ sakes" (or "Christ's sake",
which is a bit smaller and is included in the other search, as is
"Christ sake"). This chart is pretty full from 1840 forward. Sure, there
are some peaks and valleys--the latter notably during both world war
periods. But the only odd drop is in 1881-2.

Then, I thought, there must be other variations.

Try "chrissake", without the final "s". It's a very similar pattern,
with several isolated instances until the 1960s (1967, to be more
specific), fairly flat through the early 1970s, a precipitous drop in
1975, NONE in 1976, fairly flat but low through the early 1980s. The
pace picks up again after 1984 and again peaks in 2006.

OK, now try "crissakes"--without the "h". The distributions is somewhat
similar to "chrissakes". For "crissakes", it's an isolated hit in the
1954 (directly quoting from a novel in a book review), fairly flat (and
low) from 1967 through the 1980s (varying from 0 to 3 can be considered
flat), rises again to 17 in 1997, peaks again in 2007, then declines
again. This time, there are three gaps--1980, 82, 84, and the numbers
are generally lower. Again, s-less variant is included in the "plural"
but not vice versa.

I am wondering what, if anything, can be gleaned from these patterns.
This is not to say that anyone should care, but, to my eye, it looks odd.

     VS-)

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