London - If the words we use every day reveal anything about our society, then gone are the days of handkerchiefs, handwriting, soup and suppers.
Welcome instead to the new world of mortgages and movies, celebrity and sex.
Researchers have ranked 2 500 of our most commonly used words and compared them with the same list from 50 years ago.
Linguists at the University of Lancaster used computers to trawl through millions of books, speeches, studies and newspaper articles currently in circulation.
They found ‘marriage,’ ‘childhood,’ ‘God’ and ‘religion’ all fell in popularity but ‘Christmas’ was on the up. And although ‘modesty,’ ‘conscience’ and ‘gentleman’ are no longer in vogue, ‘sex’ and ‘celebrity’ are far more common.
Project leader Dr Vaclav Brezina said: “Our list, when compared with the original, reflects the changes in society over the past few decades.” - Daily Mail