attrit vs tell

attrit

verb
  • To engage in attrition; to quit or drop out. 

  • To be reduced in quantity through attrition. 

  • To lose, or to kill, troops by attrition due to sustained firepower. 

  • To wear down through attrition, especially mechanical attrition. 

noun
  • One who voluntarily or involuntarily leaves a company; a termed employee. 

tell

verb
  • To narrate. 

  • To order; to direct, to say to someone. 

  • To instruct or inform. 

  • To reveal. 

  • To convey by speech; to say. 

  • To reveal information in prose through outright expository statement -- contrasted with show 

  • To count, reckon, or enumerate. 

  • To have an effect, especially a noticeable one; to be apparent, to be demonstrated. 

  • To inform someone in authority about a wrongdoing. 

  • To discern, notice, identify or distinguish. 

  • To be revealed. 

  • To use (beads or similar objects) as an aid to prayer. 

noun
  • A private message to an individual in a chat room; a whisper. 

  • A hill or mound, originally and especially in the Middle East, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements. 

  • A reflexive, often habitual behavior, especially one occurring in a context that often features attempts at deception by persons under psychological stress (such as a poker game or police interrogation), that reveals information that the person exhibiting the behavior is attempting to withhold. 

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