balk vs crab

balk

verb
  • To disappoint; to frustrate. 

  • To refuse suddenly. 

  • To stop short and refuse to go on. 

  • To leave heaped up; to heap up in piles. 

  • To omit, miss, or overlook by chance. 

  • To leave or make balks in. 

  • To make a deceptive motion to deceive another player. 

  • To stop, check, block. 

  • To indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring. 

  • To engage in contradiction; to be in opposition. 

noun
  • Beam, crossbeam; squared timber; a tie beam of a house, stretching from wall to wall, especially when laid so as to form a loft, "the balks". 

  • The wall of earth at the edge of an excavation. 

  • The area of the table lying behind the baulk line. 

  • A sudden and obstinate stop. 

  • A hindrance or disappointment; a check. 

  • The rope by which fishing nets are fastened together. 

  • The area of the table lying behind the line from which the cue ball is initially shot, and from which a ball in hand must be played. 

  • An illegal motion by the pitcher, intended to deceive a runner. 

  • A motion used to deceive the opponent during a serve. 

  • An uncultivated ridge formed in the open field system, caused by the action of ploughing. 

crab

verb
  • To be ill-tempered; to complain or find fault. 

  • To navigate (an aircraft, e.g. a glider) sideways against an air current in order to maintain a straight-line course. 

  • To move in a manner that involves keeping low and clinging to surfaces. 

  • To ruin. 

  • To fish for crabs. 

  • To move (a camera) sideways. 

  • To back out of something. 

  • To complain about. 

  • To cudgel or beat, as with a crabstick 

  • To drift or move sideways or to leeward (by analogy with the movement of a crab). 

  • To complain. 

noun
  • The meat of this crustacean, served as food; crabmeat. 

  • A movable winch or windlass with powerful gearing, used with derricks, etc. 

  • A playing card with the rank of three. 

  • The crab apple or wild apple. 

  • The tree bearing crab apples, which has a dogbane-like bitter bark with medical use. 

  • A machine used in ropewalks to stretch the yarn. 

  • A claw for anchoring a portable machine. 

  • The tree species Carapa guianensis, native to South America. 

  • A form of windlass, or geared capstan, for hauling ships into dock, etc. 

  • A crustacean of the infraorder Brachyura, having five pairs of legs, the foremost of which are in the form of claws, and a carapace. 

  • An infestation of pubic lice (Pthirus pubis). 

  • A position in rowing where the oar is pushed under the rigger by the force of the water. 

  • A defect in an outwardly normal object that may render it inconvenient and troublesome to use. 

  • A cudgel made of the wood of the crab tree; a crabstick. 

  • The angle by which an aircraft's nose is pointed upwind of its groundtrack to compensate for crosswinds during an approach to landing; its crab angle. 

  • The state of an aircraft's nose being pointed upwind of its groundtrack to compensate for crosswinds during an approach to landing. 

  • A bad-tempered person. 

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