Tea Blog

The internet often presents us with an endless stream of novelties and distractions—though it can still be used for practical matters like paying your electric bill.

Many of these novelties fall into the category of time-wasters, but occasionally you come across something more useful.

One such tool is the

Google Ngram Viewer for tracking word usage trends in books
,
which offers a fascinating way to explore how language evolves over time.

The Ngram Viewer allows users to enter words or phrases and see how frequently they appear in printed texts across different time periods and categories.

As the tool itself explains, it generates graphs showing how phrases occur in a corpus of books—such as British English or English fiction—over selected years.

It may not replace cat videos for entertainment, but it can still be surprisingly engaging.

Tea Terms Through Time

My first instinct when using the tool was to explore how tea-related terms have evolved over time—and the results were quite interesting.

The word “tea” itself appears early, with notable increases in usage after 1660, followed by steady growth through the centuries.

Usage slows somewhat mid‑20th century before rising again toward modern times.

green tea varieties and loose leaf selections

begin appearing later, around the mid‑18th century, with significant spikes in popularity over time—especially in recent decades.

Similarly,

black tea blends and traditional loose leaf options

follow a comparable trajectory, though with less dramatic variation.

Meanwhile,

oolong tea varieties and semi-oxidized tea selections

and

white tea options and delicate loose leaf teas

appear less frequently overall, reflecting their more niche popularity.

These trends are far more compelling when visualized.

If you’d like to explore the data for yourself, you can visit the

Google Books Ngram Viewer interactive graph tool

and experiment with different terms.

See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles

on the tea blog author archive page
.

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