awful vs terrible

awful

adj
  • Very bad. 

  • Exceedingly great; usually applied intensively. 

adv
  • Very, extremely. 

  • Awfully; dreadfully; terribly. 

terrible

adj
  • Very bad; lousy. 

  • Intense; extreme in degree or extent. 

  • Dreadful; causing terror, alarm and fear; awesome 

  • Formidable, powerful. 

  • Unpleasant; disagreeable. 

adv
  • In a terrible way; to a terrible extent; terribly; awfully. 

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