Personal Blogs

Thanks to those excellent people at Merriam-Webster you can now travel back in time to see what words and expressions are first attested from any particular year. It's interesting to see what words have become common, which are around but not common, and which have faded from view.

Here are some from 80 years ago, first some that are fairly familiar today (I couldn't find an example for all 26 letters) and don't all seem as old as they are, then some that are now obscure (to me anyway).

1. anti-fungal, blip, commoner, d'oh, end user, firestorm, guided missile, hassle, information theory, macroeconomics, name-dropping, off-limits, press-secretary, rollover, snorkel, turbocharged, up-front, work ethic
2. acrocentric, bacitracin, daidzein, extraliterary, infraorderer, microbus, nol-pros, ripstop, scungilli, vizsla, x-height