Some years ago Marc Alexander published some fascinating treemaps based on the HTOED (see here: https://historicalthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/treemaps/) showing how various conceptual domains grew and shrunk their vocabulary over time. Recently someone asked me what OED could tell us about the ages of some specific trait words in English. The linked spreadsheet gives an answer to that, using the 2022 instance of OED3.
Using OED as a source for “age of a word” raises all the usual caveats, so here are a few notes on the data: Read More