alter vs neuter

alter

verb
  • To castrate, neuter or spay (a dog or other animal). 

  • To change the form or structure of. 

  • To tailor clothes to make them fit. 

  • To become different. 

  • To affect mentally, as by psychotropic drugs or illness. 

noun
  • An identity or headmate of a person with dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder). A member of a system. 

neuter

verb
  • To remove sex organs from an animal to prevent it from having offspring; to castrate or spay, particularly as applied to domestic animals. 

  • To drastically reduce the effectiveness of something. 

  • To rid of sexuality. 

adj
  • Having a form which is not masculine nor feminine; or having a form which is not of common gender. 

  • Sexless, nonsexual. 

  • Neutral; on neither side; neither one thing nor another. 

  • Intransitive. 

  • Sexless: having no or imperfectly developed sex organs. 

noun
  • A noun of the neuter gender; any one of those words which have the terminations usually found in neuter words. 

  • An organism, either vegetable or animal, which at its maturity has no generative organs, or but imperfectly developed ones, as a plant without stamens or pistils, as the garden Hydrangea; especially, one of the imperfectly developed females of certain social insects, as of the ant and the common honeybee, which perform the labors of the community, and are called workers. 

  • An intransitive verb or state-of-being verb. 

  • A person who takes no part in a contest; someone remaining neutral. 

  • The neuter gender. 

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