I have a couple of comments on the discussion of the word database. 1. One book, especially if it's a history or instruction book about lace (or a type of lace) is likely to have the terms repeated many times throughout the pages. Remember, the graphs show the number of times the words appear, not how many books they appear in.
2. I tried looking at the first appearance(s) of "crochet", and also looked at the early appearances of "tatting". Crochet appears many times in the mid- to late-1700s. But every early mention was about music (a crochet is half the length of a minim), or hooks used in medicine, or some sort of idea (the crochet was something that was thought about). In 1773 and 1774 there were the first mentions of crochet that is probably needlework--in a chemistry periodical! Reference to these two quotes by the same author (a review of a book that, after reading, should be given to one's sweetheart for crochet patterns; and a person incapable of drawing a spread-eagle or a crochet pattern) appear in future examples of this same periodical. The early references to tatting in the multi-lace graph were mistakes. One was "ex" and "ecuting" (carried over to a new line), another was "tatling gossips" (which we would spell "tattling"), etc. My points is that we need to examine the literature citations before trying to understand the heights of the graph's peaks and troughs. The actual numbers making up a peak can be very small (the difference between 0.00002% and 0.00004% is a small number, even though one is double the other) and therefore affected by other uses for the same word and by mistakes by the scanning software. There may be other kinds of "errors" affecting the peaks, too. I join others in the fascination of this database, I just want to point out that we need to take the results with a bit of skepticism before we try to rationalize how a peak can be so high or so low. Robin Robin P. Los Angeles, California, USA [email protected] - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]
