"(one's) to lose"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 10/2/2011 03:48 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>But whatever the literal meaning of the seemingly straightforward phrase "X
>is Y's to lose," that elementary string of words, which individually are in
>the vocabulary of every three-year-old, seems not to exist in print in the
>English language before 1916. That means that effectively it had no
>existence. That situation apparently persisted for about another 80 years.

Jon, this paragraph led me to wonder -- is there any data on what
percentage of words written (in print, I mean, including pixels) in
every decade is accessible to full text search?  Could that be a
factor in not finding instances of use for several decades after
first appearance?

Joel

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