[thaumasiotes]

> Suppose we were going to rate words on a scale of one to ten in two dimensions. First, we are going to rate how old fashioned a word is. Second, we will rate how funny the word seems to us.

> For example, if we wanted to rate "poppycock" we might say that it's a 9 for "old fashioned" and an 8 for "Funny". Poppycock would be 9, 8. Another word, like snail, isn't especially old fashioned or funny. Though, the word has been around a while - we could call it a 5, 2.

This is a sense of "old-fashioned" that I've never heard of. As far as I'm aware, "old-fashioned" is entirely defined by not being in current use. The age of the word is irrelevant, but if it were relevant, and "poppycock" - a word from the 19th century - were a 9 out of 10, "snail" - a word from Old English - would be something more like a 1500 out of 10.

[woodruffw]

I think that's why they say "old-fashioned" instead of "has an extremely old (attestable) etymology."

As a native English speaker, "poppycock" sounds more "old-fashioned" (maybe "quainter") than "snail," even though "snail" might actually be older.

[thaumasiotes]

Well, it's pretty easy to assume that snail is very, very old. As I said above, in my opinion it doesn't sound "old-fashioned" because it's still current, and how old it might be is irrelevant.

But see also my observation about the English female names Gertrude and Etheldreda. Which one is more old-fashioned?

[inteoryx]

I suppose "old fashioned" is much more of a subjective measurement than an objective one. At first I was going to rate "snail" as not at all old fashioned, since we still use the word. But then, I thought of medieval snail drawings, and felt like the word has some element to it that does harken back to older days. "Citadel" is kind of a similar example. There is a modern hedge fund named Citadel and we still use that word, but it also has a connection to the past. I'd say Citadel is more "old timey" than "snail" even though both words are in modern parlance.

A better way to think about it is that these measurements are my subjective opinion on old timeyness and sillyness via an undefined and intuitive process for assigning values.

[thaumasiotes]

> like the word has some element to it that does harken back to older days

It's more interesting than you might think! Turns out snail is a diminutive form of snake[1], from a root referring to creeping over the ground.

The other aspect of judgments of old-fashionedness is that things that are really old-fashioned, like being named Etheldreda, will tend to be rated as less old-fashioned than things that are pretty recent but out of current fashion, like being named Gertrude. The old old things are too forgotten to be "old".

My other question would be "why 'cosine similarity' rather than 'correlation'?". Same thing, but people are a lot more familiar with the term 'correlation'.

[1] OE snaca preserved the /k/ sound, but OE snægl voiced it, and the /g/ then predictably turned into a Y sound (compare "yard" / "day"), giving us the I of modern snail.

[rdiddly]

I would probably model "old fashionedness" as a question of "when was this word's popularity peak?" i.e. how long ago (how "old") was the time at which this word was at its most popular (most in "fashion")?