Using Twitter to Study Word Uses/ Patterns

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Johnson  l  Learning from Fingered Speech; Twitter is useful for many things -- including (unexpectedly) for studying dialects. Economist, July 6, 2017.
https://www.economist.com/news/b ... luding-unexpectedly

Note:
(a) " 'THAT'S pants!' says the exasperated Londoner, confusing Americans. Why would anyone swear by pants? Transatlantic types know the reason: in Britain, pants are undergarments, in America they are mere trousers. Or at least that's what the New York-London jet-set believes. But in the north-west of England, “pants” are trousers, just as they are in America (and just as they were first elsewhere in England). 'Pants' as underpants is the newcomer.  Jack Grieve, a linguist at Birmingham University, uses Twitter to study regional patterns in English. * * * People writing on Twitter or Facebook leave an electronic data trail that can be gathered and analysed almost instantly. And in those media they put what they would say in speech into text, in a new mode of communication that John McWhorter of Columbia University has come to describe as 'fingered speech.' "
(i)
(A) pants (n)
"1: British  underpants or knickers
2: North American:  trousers
3: British informal:   rubbish; nonsense"
http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pants
(B) Regarding women's and girls' bottom underwear. Americans call them panties whereas the British, knickers.
* panties (plural noun): "US"
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/panties
* knickers (plural noun): "BR  knickers are women's and girl's [sic] underpants"
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/knickers(C)
(C) etymology:
* pants came from pantaloons. See (D).
* nickers came from
nickerbockers (clothing)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knickerbockers_(clothing)
("In British English knickers means underwear worn by women")
(D)
* pantaloon (n)
"pantaloons plural
a :  wide breeches worn especially in England during the reign of Charles II
b :  close-fitting trousers usually having straps passing under the instep and worn especially in the 19th century"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pantaloon

foot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot
(The instep is the arched part of the foot between the toes and the ankle)
* Vic, Regency Fashion: Men's Breeches, Pantaloons, and Trousers. Jane Austen's World, June 21, 2013,
http://janeaustensworld.wordpres ... -pantaloons-and-tro


(b) "The same goes for other shibboleths. 'Sofa' is near-universal in England, and 'couch' dominant in Scotland. * * * Mr Grieve's maps for 'gosh' in America show this “minced oath” to be popular not only in Mormon Utah, but in" Texas etc
(i) shibboleth (n; Did You Know?)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shibboleth
(ii) mince (vt): "to restrain (words) within the bounds of decorum  <minced no words in stating his dislike — JT Farrell>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mince