It's difficult to capture the milieu of an era you don't inhabit. Even capturing everything about the year 2025 - the memes, the slang, the influencers - is difficult because there isn't any single correct way to live in the current year or to feel about what's happening.
Fortunately, the internet is full of information that might never make it into the Encyclopedia Britannica. Or even Wikipedia.
When I write a story set in the past, I want to make my characters think and speak like a person of that era. I look up pictures of what people wore and how they styled their hair, and read what daily routines were like, what they might have talked about. I try to get the technology right by looking up the history of light switches and curling irons and indoor sanitation. I check to see what names were most popular for a man born in 1856 or a woman born in 1920. How many times a day was mail delivered in London in 1881? (Six.) How would people of different classes address one another in 1912? (complicated.) At what age did boys start wearing long trousers in the 1880s? (Thirteen.)
I'm not calling this research work. It's what I enjoy most about writing another period. And I love being able to drop historical trivia into conversations. (You might want to avoid being seated at the same table with me at dinner. I will talk about Victorian mourning customs.)
And it's difficult to even know what to ask yourself. There are so many things we take for granted, like the 5-day work week, compulsory education, standardized time. The best advice I can give is to read books written about a period, or (even better) read books written during that period.
One of the hardest things to get right in an historical story is how people talked. What would you call a secretary in 1920? Did that word even exist? Did it mean something different?
What about idioms? Did people say double down in 1895? Did English people say it, or only Americans? There are significant differences, even today, between the way an American uses the language and how other English speakers use the same words, even common ones. (E.g. "gotten" is American, not British.)
A dictionary/thesaurus has some information that can answer questions like these, but I'd like to share a couple resources you might not have used.
Note: there are many, many resources, and I do not claim to know about them all. These are just what I use often and find reliable.
Google Ngram Viewer scans thousands of books by publication date to give you a word's popularity across time. You can request information for a range of years, and what corpus you'd like to use (e.g. British or American English). From this you'll learn when a word came into use, when it was most popular, and when the usage fell off. If you're trying to compare synonyms, separate the words by commas in the search box.
For idioms, which are not always dated in a dictionary reference, I often just google it: double down idiom origin. From this search, I learn that it's primarily an American idiom, first noted in 1949, and its original context was the game blackjack. (It's also good to check what the sources are. AI makes too many mistakes; do your own checking.)
My favorite online word reference is Online Etymology Dictionary. It didn't give me any help on double down, but I learned that double trouble dates from 1520, double dip is first attested in 1936, and double-jointed was in use by 1828.
Wiktionary also gives usage information, and contains quite a lot of non-English words.
As for names, my favourite source is Behind the Name. It has sites for first names and surnames that will tell you a name's origin, other people who have that name, variations of it across regions. You can look up names by gender and nationality. There's even a Name Generator, and the beginnings of a Place Names reference.
In addition, it's useful to know what names were popular in what year, so you don't give a character a name that's inappropriate in a given time period. In Behind the Name, click on any name to get popularity graphs by country. Then you won't give an 1895 character a name that wasn't popular until 1985, e.g. Tiffany. Other sites list popular names by era.
I do not deny being a word nerd (1951, U.S. student slang, probably an alteration of 1940s slang nert "stupid or crazy person," itself an alteration of nut).
You may not care of characters in an historical romance are using words that weren't yet in use. I do care. It bugs me when I read a story set in a past era where the characters all talk like American adolescents in 2026.
Unless the characters are all time travellers, of course. Even so, learning the idioms of the era you're travelling to ought to be part of a time traveller's education. That's what authors are, you know. We travel through time.
If you find this helpful, please reblog! 💕 And if you have other resources, please share!
Tagging a few who write: @mydogwatson @totallysilvergirl @raina-at @lisbeth-kk @221beloved @meetinginsamarra @copperplatebeech @naefelldaurk @7-percent @thegildedbee @helloliriels @stellacartography @chriscalledmesweetie
Word Storms are a writer's way to play. They stir up creativity. They help you work through problems. They help you write your story.
If you are a writer, you love words. I know that I do. Word Storms are a writer’s way to play. They stir up creativity. They help you work through problems. They help you write your story.
Discovering Words
There are many places to search out words to play with. Here are some wordy places that every author needs to have at their fingertips.
Dict.org. Returns definitions from a wide range of…
