For writers and other word lovers: the British National Corpus

[nuxvomica]

While surfing the internets, I found this neat site where you can type in a word and get random examples of its usage:

What is the BNC?
The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English from the later part of the 20th century, both spoken and written. The latest edition is the BNC XML Edition, released in 2007.

The written part of the BNC (90%) includes, for example, extracts from regional and national newspapers, specialist periodicals and journals for all ages and interests, academic books and popular fiction, published and unpublished letters and memoranda, school and university essays, among many other kinds of text. The spoken part (10%) consists of orthographic transcriptions of unscripted informal conversations (recorded by volunteers selected from different age, region and social classes in a demographically balanced way) and spoken language collected in different contexts, ranging from formal business or government meetings to radio shows and phone-ins.

http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

Just some of what came up after a search for the word "quaff".


CGB 434 The land of the rising sun is home to short, impassive and incredibly clever people who feed their brains with raw fish, while Flanders is full of immensely fat, stupid people who quaff beer and dunk their chips in mayonnaise.

CH6 3736 The tipple will be on sale from September and Dave reckons anyone brave enough to quaff it may well wake up feeling anything but ale and hearty.

EDJ 530 `;Are we to understand,'; I cross-examined, `;that this is an establishment owned by someone who deems himself a Squire; or, on the other hand, that this is a location sought out by Squires such as yourself when they desire to quaff?';

EDJ 2125 We met in a pub, some crepuscular burrow where Stuart is a regular little furry creature, where he can crouch happily in the reconstructed inglenook (imitation Norman Shaw) and quaff his ale as his yeoman forefathers have so quaffed since antiquity.


And of course, I did a search on the word "fuck":


A05 1655 By the end of it you're no all that sure whether teachers get long holidays or no (they do, though most of them have to work hard for it), and whether parents should go and fuck themselves.

A0L 1604 Jay had done wine, and decided, fuck it, there's always a take-away if the bitch is hungry.

A0L 2281 I know you're scared of it, fuck it, you said you felt safe with me.

ACN 2421 As Kenny McLeod says: `;What we share with these groups is that we can now do what the fuck we like.';

ACP 989 I think I'd really like to fuck off and not come back.';

AD9 4035 Fuck Crevecoeur, fuck Penumbra, fuck you , Tammuz Malamute!';

[nuxvomica]

1. A kick for the evening

:kick: