allowable vs better than nothing

allowable

adj
  • Permissible; tolerable; legitimate. 

  • Appropriate; satisfactory; acceptable. 

  • Intellectually admissible; valid; probable. 

  • Able to be added or deducted in consideration of something. 

noun
  • permitted amount or activity. 

better than nothing

adj
  • Barely useful; almost worthless or pointless, but nevertheless better than having nothing at all. 

How often have the words allowable and better than nothing occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )