balk vs dust

balk

verb
  • To leave or make balks in. 

  • 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 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. 

  • To disappoint; to frustrate. 

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. 

dust

verb
  • To leave; to rush off. 

  • To remove dust; to clean by removing dust. 

  • To spray or cover something with fine powder or liquid. 

  • To kill. 

  • Of a bird, to cover itself in sand or dry, dusty earth. 

  • To reduce to a fine powder; to levigate. 

  • To remove dust from. 

noun
  • The act of cleaning by dusting. 

  • Submicron particles in outer space, largely silicates and carbon compounds, that contribute greatly to extinction at visible wavelengths. 

  • The earthy remains of bodies once alive; the remains of the human body. 

  • A disturbance or uproar. 

  • A low or mean condition. 

  • Something worthless. 

  • Fine, dry particles of matter found in the air and covering the surface of objects, typically consisting of soil lifted up by the wind, pollen, hair, etc. 

  • The earth, as the resting place of the dead. 

  • A totally disconnected set of points with a fractal structure. 

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