The following article by Chris Tribble discusses the uses of words associated with crash in the (Manchester) Guardian Weekly.

Putting technology to the crash test

Ah, computers. I couldn't write this column without one, but I nearly missed the deadline because my shiny new PC decided to crash. Having had to spend the best part of 24 hours getting it working again, I wondered how the Guardian Weekly dealt with this kind of technological breakdown.

Despite my recent experience, crash doesn't seem to be that closely linked with computers in this newspaper. Crashes appear to be either rail, road, financial, dotcom or internet-related.

Most of the things that are reported as crashing are, however, to do with transport: car, plane, train, helicopter, Concorde, jet, bus and coach, as are the places where crashes have happened: Hatfield, Paddington and Potters Bar (notorious British train crashes) and Paris (an air crash). Crashes can also be market-related (Wall Street), and they can be great, global, almighty and (though not in my case) fatal.

What of computers themselves? In the Guardian Weekly archive (1997 - 2008), the word computer occurs 2,385 times, a tad more frequently than girl (2,384) and brother (2,383), so it clearly has some prominence in the language. In descending order of frequency, computers are reported on as being personal, home, government, central, handheld or military and being produced by Apple and Dell - the only two names in the top 100.

The word that follows computer most frequently is game, followed by: systems, software, generated, industry, science, screen, programmer, chips and technology. No mention in the top 100 of crashes, and no mention of users tearing their hair out. Go further down the list though, and you do start to find hackers, and (less frequently) users, along with glitch and geeks.

The other computer-related word that bears real consideration is internet. With 3,443 instances in the last 10 years, internet occurs more frequently than computer and seems to be more closely associated with cultural change than computer.

The words that go with computer are mainly boring, technical stuff. By contrast internet is associated with: cafe, browser, chatroom, gambling, search, services, chat, telephony and porn. The useful and the not so useful. But don't forget, the internet crashes too.