Fun with Word Mentions

If you type in "define" as well as a word into google, you will usually get not only a definition and etymology, but also a chart with the word's usage over time.  Here are some words that I think help tell the story of the United States during the modern (post WWII) period.

asshole




So, there has been an explosion of these types of people since World War II, aka The Gasoline War. What kind of society were we building at that time?

exurb




exurbia




For a brief time, it was understood by Americans that they were making something new and different, that those levels of sprawl don't amount to a real connection with the main city we wanted to swoop into for goods and services at command, afterwards retreating to utopian "good neighborhoods."  A new term was coined and brought into usage.  But "exurb" was not destined to replace "suburb."

suburb




suburbia





The cultural suicide of the Big Three Era didn't make the suburb.  It made suburbia.

racism




I think this one is first about the awareness of racism, and then its continued rise in use comes as a cold-prickly-style insult.

awesome



It often takes a non-American perspective to see how ridiculous our usage of this word is.

bargain




Everyone wants a bargain. Also, I just wanted a word to serve as a baseline.  Not every usage has exploded here in the modern era.  In fact. . .

dignity




Yeah. . .