Final Project

While the larger boys in the village school of Greenbank were having a game of "three old cat" before school-time, there appeared on the playground a strange boy, carrying two books, a slate, and an atlas under his arm. He was evidently from the country, for he wore a suit of brown jeans, or woollen homespun, made up in the natural color of the "black" sheep, as  we call it. He shyly sidled up to the school-house door, and looked doubtfully at the boys who were playing, watching the familiar game as  though he had never seen it before. The boys who had the "paddles" were standing on three bases, while three others stood each behind a base and tossed the ball around the triangle from one hole or base to another. The new-comer soon perceived that, if one with a paddle, or bat, struck at the ball and missed it, and the ball was caught directly, or "at the first bounce," he gave up his bat to the one who had "caught him out." When the ball was struck, it was called a "tick," and when there was a tick, all the batters were obliged to run one base to the left, and then the ball thrown between a batter and the base to which he was running "crossed him out," and obliged him to give up his "paddle" to the one who threw the ball. "Four old cat," "two old cat," and "five old cat" are, as everybody knows, played in the same way, the number of bases or holes increasing with the addition of each pair of players. It is probable that the game was once--some hundreds of years ago, maybe--called "three hole catch," and that the name was gradually corrupted into "three hole cat," as it is still called in the interior States, and then became changed by mistake to "three old cat." It is, no doubt, an early form of our present game of base-ball. It was this game which the new boy watched, trying to get an inkling of how it was played. He stood by the school-house door, and the girls who came in were obliged to pass near him. Each of them stopped to scrape her shoes, or rather the girls remembered the foot-scraper because they were curious to see the new-comer. They cast furtive glances at him, noting his new suit of brown clothes, his geography and atlas, his arithmetic, and, last of all, his face. "There's a new scholar," said Peter Rose, or, as he was called, "Pewee" Rose, a stout and stocky boy of fourteen, who had just been caught out by  another.   "I say, Greeny, how did you get so brown?" called out Will  Riley, a rather large, loose-jointed fellow.   Of course, all the boys laughed at this. Boys will sometimes  laugh at any one suffering torture, whether the victim be a  persecuted cat or a persecuted boy. The new boy made no answer,  but Joanna Merwin, who, just at that moment, happened to be scraping her shoes, saw that he grew red in the face with a quick flush of anger.   "Don't stand there, Greeny, or the cows'll eat you up!" called Riley, as he came round again to the base nearest to the school-house.   Why the boys should have been amused at this speech,  the new scholar could not tell--the joke was neither new nor witty-- only impudent and coarse. But the little boys about the door giggled.

Lexical three old cat the interior States furtive [glance] greeny impudent village school sidled up to obliged [grow] red in the face Syntax For [p*] [v*] obliged [p*] to some hundreds get an inkling Function Words Semantic Spelling Base-ball (compared to baseball) New-comer (compared to newcomer) “False Hits” Woollen homespun Caught him out [vb*] [v*] directly

LDS General Conference: Missions

[Mission]:

[Missionary]:

Age* change*:

Sister [missionary]:

Service [mission]:

Senior [missionary]:

Full*time [mission]:

[Return] [missionary]:

Common Collocates:

[mission]-States, field, presidents, stakes, central

[missionary]-work, service, field, number, full-time

Real/Really

COHA Raw:

 COHA Divided:

COCA Raw:

COCA Divided:

BNC:

GLoWbE:

Morphological Changes- RE to ER

Centre/Center

Theatre/Theater

Litre/Liter

Metre/Meter

Semantic Change: Hit

Meaning (sorted by year according to OED):

1075 v Reach a destination, real or abstract; to meet with (We’ll hit Detroit by noon; we’ll hit our goal this month)

1275 v Deal a blow to, whether with hand or with an object

1400 v Cause to move by striking; Come into sudden contact with

1450 n The act of contacting one thing with another

1810 n A successful stroke in athletics

1811 n A success (the party was a real hit; the single was his first big hit)

1854 v Affected or afflicted by something (hit hard by the recession)

1891 v Cause or come about suddenly (idea hit her)

1951 n A dose of a drug

1955 v Kill intentionally and with premeditation

1959 v Pay unsolicited and usually unwanted sexual attention to (That guy was hitting on her)

1970 n A murder or robbery

 n A connection made via the internet

Most common phrase (Searched with * hit* *):

To hit the-693

And hit the-360

He hit the-334

I hit the-247

Overall Frequency:

[hit]

Slang

Insulting and describing things wouldn't be nearly as fun if we didn't create slang for them.  Everyone knows calling someone stupid isn't nearly as fun as calling someone an airhead or lamebrained and describing something as cheaply made isn't as fun as saying chintzy either. So here are some slang that you may use or may have never even heard of. 

First listed are slang insults.

Word	COHA	COCA	First Occurrence
Airhead	30	63	1973 Je n'ai pas de politique. I am an airhead.
Back*seat driver	6	11	1950 Don't be a back-seat driver, honey.
Bugger	312	260	1839 I am nothing but an old bugger, it makes no odds whether I've got one leg or two
Bum*sucker	0	0	No results
Dago	285	54	1884 And, if I did, it wuddent be for the likes of no I-talian Dago
Dit*y	22	114	1989 An exMiss America whose ditsy chirpiness conceals a viper's bite
Kook	57	152	1962 Gittel Moscowitz is a slob. Also a kook.
Redneck	133	482	1954 The farmer was a lank, long-haired, weather-reddened typical Mississippi redneck
Weirdo	77	223	1963 And, man, what a weirdo that old guy is.
Lame*brain*	18	23	1948 So this lame-brain opens it good and wide without a drop of oil in it and freezes both

The following are slang for negative descriptions.

Word	COHA	COCA	First Appearance
Chintzy	43	46	1954 I knew I had been far too chintzy about awarding medals in World War!
crappy	117	396	1937 smack down the two full pails so that the water sloshed over into the crappy muck underfoot.
Jank	42 (all names)	5 (all names)	GB (from UrbanDictionary though) 2003 They're so jank, you can see the heads of the people in front of the camera.

Technology

The last sixty years has had major strides in the arena of technological advances, most specifically the computer. Computers have vastly changed society. How we communicate, express ourselves, learn, shop, entertain ourselves, speak, and even date have all been changed in some way by technology and the computer. While this is such an enormously broad subject to cover, here is just a little taste of some technological terms.

Bandwidth was originally started in 1952 to refer to the range of frequency in regards to the radio.

Attachment originally started showing up in the 1810s but rather as a noun meaning the attachment someone has to another person. It wasn't until 1998 when if first showed up in COHA referring to something being attached to an email.

Bookmark, while originally literally meant to make a book, took on the meaning to mark an internet page to quickly go back to in 1992.

Re-boot first appeared in 1998 in COHA but showing up in 1971 in the OED.

Browser shows up throughout COHA but refers more to one who browses something. In 1992 it finally referred to a web browser. It most likely took on this name because of people “browsing” an internet webpage via a program.

Cache said to someone in the 1960s even would have probably been thought to have been mistaken for cash or a place or thing in the wild meaning a hiding place for goods. Now, cache is a commonly used tech word for something quite similar: a place to store frequently used files or data.

Chat Room was first used in the news in 1993. Most of us have probably used a chat room at least once in our lifetime, although they are no longer very popular as they were most popular in the 1990s and 2000s. If this were to have been talked about before the internet was popular, it would just sound like a special room where people went to talk to each other. Chat rooms greatly changed the way people met and communicated with each other. It even changed the way people dated.

Chips might have once only referred to little round pieces that you could bet with and trade in for money until about 1988 when it began referring to parts of a computer designed to hold information.

Download appears to show up in 1989 in COHA but it first shows up in 1977 as a noun in the OED and in 1976 as a verb.

Email has several various forms as it is transformed and used differently. The first usage of it in COHA is electronic mail in 1980, and email as well as e-mail in 1990. Email was so exciting there were even emails based around the famous line, "You've got mail!"

Mouse started in 1987 to refer to, well, a computer mouse but according to the OED first showed up in 1965. This term has posed quite the problem for people because there is one question that still stands: what is the plural for a computer mouse? If you're just dying to know, there's no specific answer. Both mice and mouses are acceptable.

Virus first appears in COHA in 1972 to refer to a program that is inserted onto a computer that makes it more or less “sick” and essentially destroys the computer.

Spam, not the combination of fake, packed meats, started showing up in COHA in 1998 referring to junk that wound up in emails but shows up in 1991 as a verb meaning to flood email or a forum, etc., with unsolicited postings or information.

ScreenSaver shows up in 1994 as a “wonderfully entertaining program [that] put[s] changing images on your PC’s screen” although the OED lists it as first appearing in 1982. Sadly, none of us are probably old enough to actually remember a time when a computer did not have a screen saver!