Words That Came and Went in the State of the Union, 1790–2026

About this chart

Each column is one year's State of the Union message, from Washington's first in 1790 to 2026, and each row is one of five words: heretofore, intercourse, shall, tonight and folks. A cell lights up by how often that word appears in that year's message, from dark when it is not said to bright yellow, compared with the word's own busiest year, which glows. The rows run in order of those busiest years. The readout names the year's President, whether the message was spoken or sent in writing, its length and its brightest words. The animation fills in the record over sixty seconds, holds on the last year for three seconds, and loops. The scrubber under the chart marks each year and pauses on any of them.

Method

Every annual message a President has sent or delivered to Congress, from George Washington's first on January 8, 1790, to February 24, 2026, one for each year — the same messages, texts and word counting as “The State of the Union in 19 Words”. There was none in 1933: Hoover's last came in December 1932 and Roosevelt's first in January 1934. Where a year has more than one, the chart uses the spoken annual address, else the written annual message, else a new President's first address to a joint session of Congress (1989, 1993, 2001, 2009, 2017, 2021 and 2025); in 1790 it uses Washington's first of two. From 1801 to 1912, and in some later years, the message was sent in writing rather than spoken; the readout says which. The texts come from government printings: Richardson's Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents for 1790–1892, in Project Gutenberg's transcription; Foreign Relations of the United States for 1893–1932; the bound Congressional Record for Taft's 1911 and 1912 messages and for 1934–1992; and the Compilation of Presidential Documents, as delivered, for 1993–2026. The spoken addresses of 1934–1992 are as printed in the Congressional Record, which sometimes differs a little from the text the White House released. Lines the Record's scans lost (in 1912, 1949 and 1957, and in the written messages of 1974 and 1979–1981) stay lost. The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was used only to check each text word for word; none of its text is used or published here.

These five words were chosen because their use rose or fell across the record. Each word's list of spellings was fixed, and saved, before the counts shown here were made, and is the same for every year. A row counts any of these words: heretofore (heretofore); intercourse (intercourse); shall (shall); tonight (tonight); folks (folks). A word is a run of letters, ignoring capitals: hyphens split words, numbers are not words, and the part of a word before an apostrophe counts as that word. Every sense of a word counts: in the early messages “intercourse” is trade and dealings between nations and peoples. “Shall” falls away in the 1970s, before the texts change source in 1993. The counts describe the words only; they say nothing about what a President meant.

Each cell is the word's mentions per 1,000 words of that year's message, so long and short messages compare fairly. Each word is then measured against its own busiest year, the year of its highest rate: heretofore 1795 (1.0 per 1,000 words), intercourse 1799 (2.0), shall 1807 (5.9), tonight 1966 (4.7) and folks 2023 (2.8). A year's cell is colored by its rate as a share of that busiest rate: dark when the word is not said, then violet under 10%, magenta from 10% to under 25%, coral from 25% to under 50%, orange from 50% to under 75% and yellow from 75%; the busiest year itself is cream and glows. So a cell's brightness compares a word only with itself. The rows run in order of each word's busiest year. The words in the readout are the year's brightest cells, up to three, the highest shares of their busiest years (ties go to the higher rate), with their rates per 1,000 words.

Data sources

• James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1790–1892 (Project Gutenberg's transcription)
• Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, the annual message, 1893–1932 (Office of the Historian)
• Congressional Record, bound edition, 1911–1912 and 1934–1992 (govinfo)
• Compilation of Presidential Documents, 1993–2026 (govinfo)