attrition vs weakening

attrition

noun
  • The loss of participants during an experiment. 

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

  • Grinding down or wearing away by friction. 

  • 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 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. 

weakening

noun
  • An instance or process of loss of strength. 

  • A structural principle of mathematical logic that states that the hypotheses of any derived fact may be freely extended with additional assumptions. 

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