...the woman was bare-headed, with blown hair, untidy and turning gray, and the man, in worn shapeless homespun, with a short beard turning gray also, was as careless in dress and bearing as his companion.
Edith Wharton - Human Nature (1933)
Not a wildly uncommon word even today, but one I expected to be on a downward path as far as usage goes. Apparently not though according to Google Ngram Viewer. Round about 1980 the downward trend went into reverse and has levelled off for about fifteen years.
Is that because of a rising interest in hand-crafted clothing as opposed to machine-made cheapo wear? I don't know, but to my eye that graph contains a hint of eco-middle-class fantasy.
Not a wildly uncommon word even today, but one I expected to be on a downward path as far as usage goes. Apparently not though according to Google Ngram Viewer. Round about 1980 the downward trend went into reverse and has levelled off for about fifteen years.
Is that because of a rising interest in hand-crafted clothing as opposed to machine-made cheapo wear? I don't know, but to my eye that graph contains a hint of eco-middle-class fantasy.
6 comments:
I see you used an up-to-date corpus 😁. What you need to do is compare it with another term such as acrylic in order to show the trends
The results are striking
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Homespun%2Clambswool&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2CHomespun%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Clambswool%3B%2Cc0
Results against lambswool
My guess is that there has also been a change in the meaning of the word which might affect its level of usage. It used to be a noun, meaning a type of garment or cloth. Now it's much more likely to be an adjective, qualifying things like philosophy, outlook, policies, and practical solutions.
I think Sam is right, the word is used now much more in the context of political speak as in the 'notion is homespun' basic , country boys, from an unsophisticated background, that sort of thing.
Graeme - interesting. If I'd guessed beforehand I'd have assumed lambswool was a relatively modern marketing word, but checking the age of familiar words often does come up with surprises. This tool gave me some surprises too
https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler
Sam and Wiggia- I'm sure you are right, although I did wonder if the man's clothes really would be homespun and even then its meaning was changing.
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