Greece, Rome

Here is what Google Ngrams makes of a search for "Greece" and "Rome" in books in English from 1750 to 2010. Apparently, a long, slow decline, sharpest for Rome, as classical education is eroded. A little spike for Greece when the struggle for independence is on. As we might expect, many citations of Rome in the period just before, during, and after the American Revolution and the making of the Constitution.

Communication / Rhetoric::1700 / 2010

Google ngram viewer is a way to visualize the Google Books database. Here is the result of a query asking for a visual comparison of usages of the words "communication" and "rhetoric" in books in English from 1700 to the present. Why the big drop in the year 2000?

The sense of what communication refers to has changed over the centuries. In the earlier period, "communication" often referred to what we would now call "transportation" or "contact."

Try it yourself at http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/