I am a self-confessed bibliophile. I love words, fonts and all things vocabulary-related. So it is not surprising that Scientific American’s article, “Explore 175 Years of Words in Scientific American” caught my eye.
Have you ever played the board game Balderdash? It is based on vocabulary words from history that are rarely or no longer used and the players make up definitions and try to persuade the other players to their validity. Basically it is a game perfect for those with wild imaginations and the skill of selling.
This article lifts up the visual representation of scientific vocabulary for the past 175 years. It will enable you to see the word frequencies undulate, soar and plunge as a function of time to track the way science talked about itself to itself. By clicking on the colored boxes, you can navigate through the decades. Type a word in the search bar to hunt for selections from more than 4,000 of the magazine’s most frequently used words.
They also encourage you to share any fun patterns or interesting word juxtapositions on social media using the hashtags #SciAm175 and #ScienceWords.
Now you know how I will be spending my evening.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
