Words: popularity and trends evolve on a 14-year cycle

The evolution of words – in any language – seem to evolve on a 14-year cycle in terms of use, popularity and trends.

Marcelo Montemurro at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and Damián Zanette at Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research identified 5,630 commonly used nouns and analysed how their popularity changed over the last three centuries (New Scientist, 30 November 2016). What was trending, when and why? The what and when were easier to determine, but why was more difficult.

A curious pattern emerged. Montemurro and Zanette found that English words rose in popularity and then fell out of favour in cycles of about 14 years, although cycles over the past century have tended to be a year or two longer. They also found evidence of 14-year cycles in French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish words and their evolution.

To find the pattern, they wrote computer scripts to dig through Google Ngram, a database of the words used in nearly five million digitised books. They ranked the nouns in order of popularity and tracked how their rankings changed from 1700 to 2008.

Some cycles appeared to coincide with historical events. For example, large collections of words declined in popularity in the years around the world wars. Although the reason for this is unclear, Montemurro thinks it could be related to political trends.

Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in England says “Language is not all over the place. It’s remarkably consistent.” However, Pagel says these cycles could be statistical coincidence.

The 14-year cycle is puzzling. Some baby names have been found to move in and out of popularity over roughly the length of a human generation. But with nouns in general, Pagel doesn’t see an obvious cultural connection. “It doesn’t fit the human life history,” he says. “There’s no particular reason why it should be 14 years.”

Montemurro admits that the significance of the cycle’s length remains unclear, but he believes it is due to more than chance. “It’s very difficult to imagine a random phenomenon that will give you this pattern,” he says. He thinks that further study of the cycle could reveal insights about human behaviour and the nature of fashion and trends.

“Assuming these patterns reflect some cultural dynamics, I hope this develops into better understanding of why we change the topics we discuss,” Montemurro says. And why it happens in cycles.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).