act vs action

act

noun
  • The process of doing something. 

  • A product of a legislative body, a statute. 

  • A display of behaviour. 

  • A display of behaviour meant to deceive. 

  • A division of a theatrical performance. 

  • Something done once and for all, as distinguished from a work. 

  • Any organized activity. 

  • A performer or performers in a show. 

  • A formal or official record of something done. 

  • A thesis maintained in public, in some English universities, by a candidate for a degree, or to show the proficiency of a student. 

  • Something done, a deed. 

verb
  • Of a play: to be acted out (well or badly). 

  • To perform a theatrical role. 

  • To play (a role). 

  • To convey an appearance of being. 

  • To map via a homomorphism to a group of automorphisms (of). 

  • To feign. 

  • To do something. 

  • To have an effect (on). 

  • To behave in a certain manner for an indefinite length of time. 

  • To do something that causes a change binding on the doer. 

action

noun
  • The effort of performing or doing something. 

  • Something done, often so as to accomplish a purpose. 

  • A religious performance or solemn function, i.e. action sermon, a sacramental sermon in the Scots Presbyterian Church. 

  • The mechanism, that is the set of moving mechanical parts, of a keyboard instrument, like a piano, which transfers the motion of the key to the sound-making device. 

  • a process existing in or produced by nature (rather than by the intent of human beings). 

  • A way of motion or functioning. 

  • The way in which a mechanical device acts when used; especially a firearm. 

  • Fast-paced activity. 

  • The event or connected series of events, either real or imaginary, forming the subject of a play, poem, or other composition; the unfolding of the drama of events. 

  • The distance separating the strings and the fretboard on a guitar or other string instrument. 

  • A charge or other process in a law court (also called lawsuit and actio). 

  • A mapping from a pairing of mathematical objects to one of them, respecting their individual structures. The pairing is typically a Cartesian product or a tensor product. The object that is not part of the output is said to act on the other object. In any given context, action is used as an abbreviation for a more fully named notion, like group action or left group action. 

  • The attitude or position of the several parts of the body as expressive of the sentiment or passion depicted. 

  • Sexual intercourse. 

  • Combat. 

  • spin put on the bowling ball. 

  • The product of energy and time, especially the product of the Lagrangian and time. 

  • The way in which cartridges are loaded, locked, and extracted from the mechanism. 

adj
  • arrogant 

intj
  • Demanding or signifying the start of something, usually a performance. 

verb
  • To act on a request etc, in order to put it into effect. 

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