You can check the common usage of words using Google Ngram and trace its history since the 1800s until 2008.

You can check the common usage of words using Google Ngram and trace its history since the 1800s until 2008. I hope they continue it to count the last 10 years, as I am sure there have been some significant declines and increases. My students often say "persons", so I have used this as an example.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=persons&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpersons%3B%2Cc0
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=persons&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share&direct_url=t1;,persons;,c0

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