argument vs thesis

argument

noun
  • A fact or statement used to support a proposition; a reason. 

  • An abstract or summary of the content of a literary work such as a book, a poem or a major section such as a chapter, included in the work before the content itself; (figuratively) the contents themselves. 

  • Any dispute, altercation, or collision. 

  • The independent variable of a function. 

  • A value, or a reference to a value, passed to a function. 

  • A parameter at a function call; an actual parameter, as opposed to a formal parameter. 

  • Any of the phrases that bears a syntactic connection to the verb of a clause. 

  • A process of reasoning; argumentation. 

  • The phase of a complex number. 

  • A quantity on which the calculation of another quantity depends. 

  • A verbal dispute; a quarrel. 

  • A series of propositions organized so that the final proposition is a conclusion which is intended to follow logically from the preceding propositions, which function as premises. 

thesis

noun
  • A proposition or statement supported by arguments. 

  • In the dialectical method of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: the initial stage of reasoning where a formal statement of a point is developed; this is followed by antithesis and synthesis. 

  • A depression of the voice when pronouncing a syllables of a word; hence, the unstressed part of the metrical foot of a verse upon which such a depression falls, or an unaccented musical note. 

  • The action of lowering the hand or bringing down the foot when indicating a rhythm; hence, an accented part of a measure of music or verse indicated by this action; an ictus, a stress. 

  • A lengthy essay written to establish the validity of a thesis (sense 1.1), especially one submitted in order to complete the requirements for a non-doctoral degree in the US and a doctoral degree in the UK; a dissertation. 

  • An affirmation, or distinction from a supposition or hypothesis. 

  • A conjecture, especially one too vague to be formally stated or verified but useful as a working convention. 

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