google ngrams

[Scott Nelson]

And don't forget Caroline, George (as an actor) and Michael (as a musician) both appeared in The Shop Girl together throughout most of its run in the UK. The play was written by Sims (?) - no, by Dam.

[caz]

Hi Scotty,

Do you have a source for Michael Maybrick's involvement in The Shop Girl?

I can't immediately find a reference.

I have long believed that the Grossmiths would have looked down their noses at the jumped-up Michael 'Stephen Adams' Maybrick, and - in a different universe - would have thought it a jolly wheeze to wind up this crashing bore with a hoax diary, planted in Battlecrease House naturally, implying that his own brother - arsenic eating, adulterous, brothel creeping, American loving cotton man - had been murdering prostitutes in Whitechapel, when not entertaining his 'other woman' in Stepney, while ostensibly paying duty visits to his celebrity sibling. You could imagine the hilarity and mischief caused if some Alice Yapp type underling had found such a spoof diary and it had been brought to Michael's attention. Of course, there would have been no way to ensure this would happen in Michael's lifetime, or even in the Grossmiths', but hoaxes don't always play out as the hoaxer intended. The thought of Michael, or anyone connected with the family, reading it and going purple with apoplexy, in spite of it being an obvious hoax, would have been enough.

Love,

Caz
X

[Scott Nelson]

I saw it on one of the Gilbert & Sullivan web pages, but I can't find it now. Michael was described as a baritone singer and was with the play for over a year with Grossmith.

[Scott Nelson]

Come to think of it, I may have read it somewhere in Bruce Robinson's book as well. I lent it out so I (conveniently) can't double check.

[Joshua Rogan]

Wasn't it George Grossmith Junior, not senior, who starred in The Shop Girl?

[rjpalmer]

Thinking it over, it seems to me that insults, such as "bumbling buffoon," tend to be 'slangy' and trendy. They come and go, spring up and die out. I thought it might be useful to punch in a few other recognizable insults and see how they behave over time, using the ngram software.

Here's one for the obsolete "ninnyhammer." (I expanded the graph so it dates back to 1700, instead of 1800).


One thing I've noticed in doing several of these is that we are getting what I believe are false hits after the year 2000 because so many recent eBooks are skewing the results. And are reprints of old texts being attributed to the right timeframe?

[rjpalmer]

Here's one for "scapegrace."

[rjpalmer]

I find this one interesting. "Dunderhead." It evidently originated in the mid-18th Century, was popular, died down, but kept its life until recent times. Again, I think the uptick after 2000 is an error. The ngram isn't giving us an accurate representation of its current popularity...that, or it's made a comeback.

[rjpalmer]

Final one from me. Excuse my French, but I wanted to punch in an insult that is indisputably modern. A clusterf*ck. Either the person, or the event cause by the person. I think the result speaks for itself. It's hard not to see that 'bumbling buffoon' in no way behaves like other known insults (try poltroon, rapscallion, 'white-livered', or fussbudget) but does behave surprisingly similar to "couch potato" or "useful idiot."

To those who believe in the antiquity of the Diary, this should be worrying.

[erobitha]

Google ngrams is notorious for transcrioption issues for earlier works. Refer to my previous article post on this thread with regards this problem, outlined in Wired magazine - a leading tech publictaion. Or just kep ignoring the problems with this type of tool.
https://www.wired.com/2015/10/pitfal...-google-ngram/

A nice example:

[MrBarnett]

Final one from me. Excuse my French, but I wanted to punch in an insult that is indisputably modern. A clusterf*ck. Either the person, or the event cause by the person. I think the result speaks for itself. It's hard not to see that 'bumbling buffoon' in no way behaves like other known insults (try poltroon, rapscallion, 'white-livered', or fussbudget) but does behave surprisingly similar to "couch potato" or "useful idiot."

To those who believe in the antiquity of the Diary, this should be worrying.

It also acts like ‘outfoxed’, I believe?

To those who believe googling will provide an answer to the question of the antiquity of the diary, this should be worrying. ;-)

[MrBarnett]

I created this thread on the Forums with my tongue firmly in my cheek, but it may be of interest/relevance here.

https://jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=33427&highlight=Cobblers

[MrBarnett]

According to Ngram, ‘load of cobblers’ peaked in 2010.

[rjpalmer]

It also acts like ‘outfoxed’, I believe?

To those who believe googling will provide an answer to the question of the antiquity of the diary, this should be worrying. ;-)

But Gary, we can be wiser than the tools we have, can't we? We can supplement the ngrams by our own searches through vast archives of journalism, for instance.

Is it impossible that Maybrick independently came up with "bumbling buffoon"? No. As Chris Phillips notes elsewhere, it is not impossible for Maybrick to have written "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah."

Ultimately, we all have to rely on commonsense. We can accept that Maybrick, in unidentifiable handwriting and damp ink, who repetitively fills the Diary with such brilliant insults as "whore" and "bitch," independently came up with "bumbling buffoon," and used it twice, even though there is no evidence it was in circulation in 1889, or even 1939.

Or we can conclude that it is highly suspicious that this exact insult was in circulation in 1992 when Barrett came forward with a diary from nowhere, and one that also retains the strange grammar of a police inventory list not available for public inspection until the 1980s.

I don't think it difficult to decide which explanation is preferable. And I don't think deliberate myopia is useful when analyzing a questioned document.

But Diary belief has always been about the willingness to accept 20 implausible explanations before breakfast.

[Abby Normal]

According to Ngram, ‘load of cobblers’ peaked in 2010.

probably on here lol