Another Look at 1S1’s iMtsster Dictiorsary— AMing Scientific Etymology ad Reflecting Changes in Science

Anarchy increased between 1976 and 19W---bu t so did ejhics and serendipity. Feminists ahnost doubled during the same period, and sexism declined dramatically. As beef dipped, breastfeeding and cannibalism increased. Both constipation and diarrhea increased, as did cancer and herpes. But anti-cancer increased tenfold, and tumors fell off. Promiscuity and erotica both increased, but lust faded and sexuality sagged. Things were looking up for evangeli.rts and androgyny. Violence and terron”sm both increased, but so did happines.r and optimism, while backaches and fathead~ became less numerous. Has anarchy really increased? Have instances of breastfeeding and cannibalism actually risen? Only in the sense that from 1976 to 1980, occurrences of these words in the titles of articles indexed by ISF increased. Increases in the occurrence of certain words, such as song and To[kien, can be attributed at least in part to the addition of the Arts & Hums nities Citation Index ‘“ to our product line. I But it cannot be denied that the vocabulary of science, like that of any living language, is constantly changing. New words are coined to describe new substances, improved processes, or previously undiscovered phenomena, while old words falf into disuse. Changes in the activities of scientists are thus reflected in the words they use-and in the words they choose for the titles of their articles. In an essay published several years ago, we examined the apparent shdts in scientific interest that occurred between 1973 and 1976.2 We were able to do this because 1S1 uses title words, as well as other bibliographic descriptors, to index each article added to our data base. We can therefore systematically observe and quantify changes in the activities of scientists, based on the frequency of occurrence of the words they use.3 How accurately this practice reflects scientific activity has never been qualitatively determined. What makes the monitoring of the ebb and flow within the language of science possible is the Unique Word Dictionary (UWD). The UWD is one of several manual and computer qualitycontrol routines we use to verify each title word before it becomes part of our data base.d,s The UWD is a machinereadable master list of correctly speIled terms that have been certified as “real” words, Real words are those that have been verified as accurate and authentic by our editors. It was the information in the earlier essay, and the light it threw on where science is taking us, that was featured in an article by Dan Greenberg in the Washington Post.6 Table 1 contains 196 terms and some of their spelling variants, selected from the UWD. To the right of each word is listed its frequency of occurrence in article titles for the years 1973, 1976, 1979, and 1980. Many of these words appeared on a similar list in the previous essay. If you look at that essay, you may note the frequencies given in it do not match the figures given in thk update,