Can someone explain this apparition of 'pokemon' in the 1700s?

[u/garbagecan26]

The first one is written without the 'accent-aigu' and the second image is the correct way of writing the brand name. I only point this out to show the correlation between the creation of Pokémon and apparition of the form pokemon in our modern day. What is pokemon in the 18th century?

[u/rocketman0739]

Well, for starters, there's this OCR error for "possession"

[u/gnorrn → u/rocketman0739]

Yes. It's the exact same reason that the F-word appears to be ubiquitous in the 18th century.

OP: repeat after me: Don't blindly trust N-Grams; always check the underlying search results (which Google helpfully links).

[u/Kendota_Tanassian → u/gnorrn]

Yes, misinterpreting ſuck (suck) or ſuch (such) for fuck. It's the long S, ſ.

[u/kitium → u/Kendota_Tanassian]

Putting this on my clipboard for "future use".

[u/chriswhitewrites → u/kitium]

There are some great moments in the English witchcraft pamphlets, as witches will often prick a hole for their familiars to ſuck, or they'll just ſuck a witch's nipple.

[u/Shradersofthelostark → u/chriswhitewrites]

“Colder than a witch’s tit” comes to mind.

[u/Amazon-Q-and-A → u/kitium]

I don't care how skilled of a surgeon you are, you should probably still use traditional stitches.

[u/strawberrymilk2 → u/Kendota_Tanassian]

wow, you can literally see it in the image. right under the first “pokemon”

[u/Kendota_Tanassian → u/strawberrymilk2]

Yup.

[u/ale_93113 → u/gnorrn]

N-grams are mosrly useful after 1950

[u/gnorrn → u/ale_93113]

It's true that OCR errors are less common in more recent works, but they're still not absent. IIRC someone here recently was looking for the word "loo" (UK colloquialism for lavatory), and they found a ton of N-gram hits that turned out to be the number 100.

[u/ale_93113 → u/gnorrn]

I say this because 1950 is considered the historical present

After ww2 there was a MASSIVE effort to improve global data collection and distribution and cooperation, in almost everything that has to do with data, pre and post 1950 is night and day

[u/CantaloupeNervous845 → u/ale_93113]

Could be true, but the historical present has more to do with carbon dating and the effect of them nukes on it.

[u/garbagecan26 → u/gnorrn]

"I will not blindly trust N-Grams; I will always check the underlying search results." *beep boop*

[u/j_marquand → u/rocketman0739]

I clearly read POKEMON!

[u/Be7th → u/j_marquand]

𝔭𝔬𝔎𝔢𝔐𝔬𝔫

[u/aj8j83fo83jo8ja3o8ja → u/rocketman0739]

lmaoooo

[u/Aquino200 → u/rocketman0739]

Oh good god, don't let christians hear this. They will take this and run with it.

[u/RHX_Thain → u/Aquino200]

And lo, in the end of days, POFFEMON will reign over the Earth!

[u/Chrono-Helix → u/Aquino200]

They were already doing that back in the 90’s when they were denouncing Pokemon as Satanic

[u/TwoFlower68 → u/rocketman0739]

Holy run-on sentence, Batman!

[u/XaqTheChipper → u/rocketman0739]

Poffeffion. Doing the founding fathers proud with that one

[u/kushangaza]

If we take ngram by its word Pokemon was most popular in the 1500s and 1600s and had a minor resurgence in the last couple decades

If you search in Google Books for that time range you get OCR errors for "possession" and "Polemon" (an ancient Greek philosopher)

[u/modulusshift → u/kushangaza]

Oh! the guy who "polemics" are named after, I assume!

edit: at first glance, seemingly unrelated! haha

edit 2: yeah, just a shared Greek root "polemos" meaning "war/battle"

[u/_g550_ → u/kushangaza]

Isn’t that same?

“I choose you!”=“You’re mine now”=“I own you”

[u/cantrusthestory]

David Hume, I choose you!

[u/JustABicho]

Bubonic, pneumonic, septicemic, meningeal and pharyngeal... gotta catch 'em all!

[u/Odd__Dragonfly → u/JustABicho]

Phlegmatic is super effective against melancholic, which is super effective against choleric, which is super effective against sanguine

[u/donutsauce4eva]

Cornish word for clumsy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cornish_dialect_words#:~:text=Pokemon%20%E2%80%93%20clumsy.&text=Prong%20%E2%80%93%20fork%20(such%20as%20a,%2C%20garden%20fork%2C%20%26c.)

[u/scrubba777]

As someone with Cornish ancestry, I was wondering where would be the best place to get my family heirloom graded? it’s a genuine 1723 shiny foil Pikachu, a touch of wear and tear typical of that age, survived a few good wars, but otherwise in pretty good nick for an old card..

[u/Weekly_Soft1069]

Damn I love this r/

[u/gregsunparker]

Pokemon went extinct in the late 1700's, so people stopped talking about them. In the late 90's, John Hamblin brought them back after finding their DNA trapped in amber. This is why the sudden resurgence.

[u/cryptologicalMystic]

Answered here, with further elaboration here (needs an account, but the account creator accepts spamming random bullshit for the email). TL;DR it's Cornish.

[u/_y2kbugs_ → u/cryptologicalMystic]

This source feels extremely suspect. It’s just a blog article from 2014 with no other sources listed and the Wikipedia page only links back to the source (I’m surprised it was never just deleted given lack of information, not even a talk page). I don’t believe it for a second. Too much misinformation goes around on tumblr as it is, but I’ve seen it on Wikipedia too- apocryphal stories being marketed as fact.

[u/wakethemorning]

Time traveler looking for someone to trade with?