a priori vs phantom

a priori

adj
  • Presumed without analysis. 

  • Self-evident, intuitively obvious. 

  • Based on hypothesis and theory rather than experiment or empirical evidence. 

  • Developed entirely from scratch, without deriving it from existing languages. 

adv
  • In a way based on theoretical deduction rather than empirical observation. 

phantom

adj
  • Fictitious or nonexistent. 

  • Illusive. 

noun
  • A ghost or apparition. 

  • A placeholder for a pair of players when there are an odd number of pairs playing. 

  • Something apparently seen, heard, or sensed, but having no physical reality; an image that appears only in the mind; an illusion or delusion. 

  • A test object. A test phantom is an object that reproduces the characteristics of human tissue. 

How often have the words a priori and phantom occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )