balk vs crib

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. 

crib

verb
  • To complain, to grumble 

  • To crowd together, or to be confined, as if in a crib or in narrow accommodations. 

  • To seize the manger or other solid object with the teeth and draw in wind. 

  • To place or confine in a crib. 

  • To shut up or confine in a narrow habitation; to cage; to cramp. 

  • To plagiarize; to copy; to cheat. 

  • To collect one or more passages and/or references for use in a speech, written document or as an aid for some task; to create a crib sheet. 

  • To install timber supports, as with cribbing. 

noun
  • A small room or covered structure, especially one of rough construction, used for storage or penning animals. 

  • A collection of quotes or references for use in speaking, for assembling a written document, or as an aid to a project of some sort; a crib sheet. 

  • A literal translation, usually of a work originally in Latin or Ancient Greek. 

  • A bed for a child older than a baby. 

  • One’s residence, house or dwelling place, or usual place of resort. 

  • A bin for drying or storing grain, as with a corn crib. 

  • A manger, a feeding trough for animals elevated off the earth or floor, especially one for fodder such as hay. 

  • A wicker basket. 

  • A hovel, a roughly constructed building best suited to the shelter of animals but used for human habitation. 

  • The card game cribbage. 

  • A small holiday home, often near a beach and of simple construction. 

  • A small raft made of timber. 

  • A baby’s bed with high, often slatted, often moveable sides, suitable for a child who has outgrown a cradle or bassinet. 

  • A snack or packed lunch, especially as taken to work to eat during a break. 

  • A confined space, as with a cage or office-cubicle 

  • A small sleeping berth in a packet ship or other small vessel 

  • The cards discarded by players and used by the dealer. 

  • A boxy structure traditionally built of heavy wooden timbers, to support an existing structure from below, as with a mineshaft or a building being raised off its foundation in preparation for being moved; see cribbing. 

  • The baby Jesus and the manger in a creche or nativity scene, consisting of statues of Mary, Joseph and various other characters such as the magi. 

  • A known piece of information corresponding to a section of encrypted text, that is then used to work out the remaining sections. 

  • A cheat sheet or past test used by students; crib sheet. 

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