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Chart searches (search form, corpora used, corrections, +/- sections)

Note: click on any link on this page to see the corpus data, and then click on the "BACK" image (see left) at the top of the page to come back to this page. Or right click on the link and then "Open link in new tab" (in Chrome; similar in other browsers), and then close that tab after viewing the corpus data.

Chart searches show the overall frequency of a word, phrase, or grammatical construction in the corpus. A LIST search will show the frequency of each matching string, whereas a CHART search shows the overall frequency of all matching strings, in each "section" of the corpus. These sections will vary from corpus to corpus -- for example, genres and time period (five year blocks) in COCA, countries and decades in the TV or Movies corpora, years in NOW, countries in GloWbE, genres in the BNC, or decades in COHA, TIME, Hansard, or EEBO. For example, compare the CHART and LIST searches for the "like construction" (and I was like, and she's like ,) in COCA. Notice that it is much more frequent in informal genres like Spoken and TV/Movies, and that it is very much increasing over time.

LIST
CHART

In most of the corpora, it is possible to "drill down" even further to see the frequency in smaller "sections" of the corpus. For example, the chart to the right shows the frequency of reds (a derogatory term for Communists) in the COHA Corpus (475 million words, 1820s-2010s), and then by year within the decade of the 1950s (note the highest frequency in 1953, at the height of the McCarthy hearings in the US Senate):

In the NOW Corpus (which currently has almost 20 billion words from 2010 to the present, and which grows by about 6-7 million words each day, or 200 million words each month), it is even possible to see the frequency by year, month, and day. For example, the chart to the right shows the frequency of fake news. Notice that it really starts to increase immediately after the 2016 elections in the US, which took place on 8 November 2016.

Finally, it is also possible to see the frequency in each of the different "sub-sections", all at one time. For example, the following is the frequency of flapper* (see Wikipedia entry) in the COHA corpus:

If you click on "See all years at once" (years are the sub-section in COHA), then you will see the following, and you can resort the list by section (e.g. by year in COHA) or by frequency.

The following are just a few sample CHART searches from some of the corpora. The bottom line is that the corpora from English-Corpora.org help users to look at variation -- between genres, or countries, or over time -- in ways that are not possible with any other corpora.

	word	phrase	syntactic construction
COCA (genres + time)	(genres) Hi!, frowned, championship, correlated (time) seldom, Y2K, old-school, smartphone	(genres) a lot of NOUN, several NOUN, in particular , (time) old school, freak out, perfect storm	like construction, get passive, end up V-ing, appear to V, must VERB
COHA (decades)	bestow, swell (ADJ), steamship, flapper, fascist, teenage*	of no little, as though to, freak out, so ADJ as to V, BE but, HAVE quite V-ed, a most ADJ NOUN	end up V-ing, post-verbal negation with need, need to VERB, HAVE quite V-ed, sentence initial hopefully, get passive
GloWbE (countries)	fortnight, banjax*, bikkies, lah!, thrice, equipments (PL)	eve teas*, BE different to, rather more ADJ, in over POSS head	VERB likely VERB+, like construction, way construction, try and VERB, [stop] someone V-ing.
NOW (years, months+)	Brexit, birther, impactful, influencer*	fake news, fidget spinner, selfie STICK, virtue signal	ended up V-ing, appeared to VERB, dare NEG VERB