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Some have talked of “culturomics”, a form of computational lexicology that uses corpus tools to analyse and forecast trends in human behaviour.

Now, as the Culturomics researchers posited, the proliferation of electronic databases and antsy online audiences are encouraging lexicographers to move faster still.

The Google Books Ngram Viewer—which resulted from the ongoing “Culturomics” project at Harvard and MIT—and other digital corpuses can detect “low-frequency words” lexicographers might be missing.

To test this evolutionary premise, Mr. Aiden and Mr. Michel wound up inventing something they call culturomics, the use of huge amounts of digital information to track changes in language, culture and history.

The momentous term culturomics suggests the authors’ ambitious view of what can seem like an intellectual parlor game.