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Interestingly enough Google Ngram shows high occurence of the word "lede" (with varying capitalization) in the 1800s with two peaks around 1815 and 1860, and th

by fao_ 9y ago

Interestingly enough Google Ngram shows high occurence of the word "lede" (with varying capitalization) in the 1800s with two peaks around 1815 and 1860, and then heavily declining usage. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lede&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=2&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Clede%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Blede%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLede%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLEDE%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lede&case_inse... EDIT: Graphing lede,lead shows that 'lead' has always been in the lead with respect to usage. However, expanding the corpus timeline shows almost competing usage in 1564! https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lede%2Clead&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1200&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=2&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Clede%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Blede%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLede%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Clead%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Blead%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BLead%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lede%2Clead&ca...

ghaff 9y ago
Note that spelling wasn't very well standardized until relatively modern times.
1_800_UNICORN 9y ago
Glad I wasn't the only one who immediately thought of searching Google Ngram. Unfortunately, if you dig into the source material, there's a lot of non-journalism usages of lede (and in the case you brought up, there will be a huge amount of non-journalistic usages of "lead"), so I don't think the data is reliable enough to form an opinion.
mysterypie 9y ago
Under the graph, google has links to open up excerpts of usage from various time periods. Looking at a bunch of them, it seems that most of them come from Lede being a proper name. I also saw a couple occurrences as a verb as in "it ledes to water".
bagrow 9y ago
If you turn off smoothing, it really jumps out how noisy and unreliable the signal is that early in the data.
imron 9y ago
> Graphing lede,lead shows that 'lead' has always been in the lead with respect to usage. Because 'lead' has many other meanings and sees more usage in entirely different contexts.

by fao_ 9y ago

ghaff 9y ago

Note that spelling wasn't very well standardized until relatively modern times.

1_800_UNICORN 9y ago

Glad I wasn't the only one who immediately thought of searching Google Ngram. Unfortunately, if you dig into the source material, there's a lot of non-journalism usages of lede (and in the case you brought up, there will be a huge amount of non-journalistic usages of "lead"), so I don't think the data is reliable enough to form an opinion.

mysterypie 9y ago

Under the graph, google has links to open up excerpts of usage from various time periods. Looking at a bunch of them, it seems that most of them come from Lede being a proper name. I also saw a couple occurrences as a verb as in "it ledes to water".

bagrow 9y ago

If you turn off smoothing, it really jumps out how noisy and unreliable the signal is that early in the data.

imron 9y ago

> Graphing lede,lead shows that 'lead' has always been in the lead with respect to usage. Because 'lead' has many other meanings and sees more usage in entirely different contexts.