absence vs appearance

absence

noun
  • A state of being away or withdrawn from a place or from companionship 

  • The period of someone being away. 

  • Temporary loss or disruption of consciousness, with sudden onset and recovery, and common in epilepsy. 

  • Lack; deficiency; nonexistence. 

  • Lack of contact between blades. 

  • Failure to be present where one is expected, wanted, or needed; nonattendance; deficiency. 

  • Inattention to things present; abstraction (of mind). 

appearance

noun
  • The way something looks; personal presence 

  • The act of appearing or coming into sight; the act of becoming visible to the eye. 

  • Chiefly used by nurses: the act of defecation by a patient. 

  • The act of appearing in a particular place, or in society, a company, or any proceedings; a coming before the public in a particular character. 

  • An instance of someone coming into a court of law to be part of a trial, either in person or represented by an attorney or such like; a court appearance 

  • A thing seen; a phenomenon; an apparition. 

  • That which is not substance, essence, hypostasis; the outward reality as opposed to the underlying reality 

  • Apparent likeness; the way which something or someone appears to others. 

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