attrition vs grinding

attrition

noun
  • Grinding down or wearing away by friction. 

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

  • Imperfect contrition or remorse. 

  • 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. 

grinding

noun
  • The action of grinding together or crushing into small particles. 

  • A form of dance in which two people rub their bodies together. 

  • Repeatedly performing the same quest or similar in-game activity in order to amass points or wealth. 

adj
  • Relentlessly taxing; burdensome; exacting to the point of exhaustion. 

  • Of or pertaining to the act or sound of grinding. 

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