attrition vs grief

attrition

noun
  • Imperfect contrition or remorse. 

  • A gradual, natural reduction in membership or personnel, as through retirement, resignation, or death. 

  • Grinding down or wearing away by friction. 

  • The gradual reduction in a tangible or intangible resource due to causes that are passive and do not involve productive use of the resource. 

  • The loss of participants during an experiment. 

  • The wearing of teeth due to their grinding. 

  • The loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language. 

verb
  • To reduce the number of (jobs or workers) by not hiring new employees to fill positions that become vacant (often with out). 

  • To undergo a reduction in number. 

  • To grind or wear down through friction. 

grief

noun
  • Suffering, hardship. 

  • Emotional pain, generally arising from misfortune, significant personal loss, bereavement, misconduct of oneself or others, etc.; sorrow; sadness. 

  • Cause or instance of sorrow or pain; that which afflicts or distresses; trial. 

verb
  • To deliberately harass and annoy or cause grief to other players of a game in order to interfere with their enjoyment of it; especially, to do this as one’s primary activity in the game. 

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