balk vs scout

balk

verb
  • 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. 

  • 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. 

scout

verb
  • To reject with contempt. 

  • To scoff. 

  • To pour forth a liquid forcibly, especially excrement. 

  • To explore a wide terrain, as if on a search. 

  • To observe, watch, or look for, as a scout; to follow for the purpose of observation, as a scout. 

noun
  • A fighter aircraft. 

  • Term of address for a man or boy. 

  • An act of scouting or reconnoitering. 

  • A member of any number of youth organizations belonging to the international scout movement, such as the Boy Scouts of America or Girl Scouts of the United States. 

  • A person employed to monitor rivals' activities in the petroleum industry. 

  • A fielder in a game for practice. 

  • A housekeeper or domestic cleaner, generally female, employed by one of the constituent colleges of Oxford University to clean rooms; generally equivalent to a modern bedder at Cambridge University. 

  • A preliminary image that allows the technician to make adjustments before the actual diagnostic images. 

  • The guillemot. 

  • A person who assesses and/or recruits others; especially, one who identifies promising talent on behalf of a sports team. 

  • A domestic servant, generally male, who would attend (usually several) students in a variety of ways, including cleaning; generally equivalent to a gyp at Cambridge University or a skip at Trinity College, Dublin. 

  • A person sent out to gain and bring in tidings; especially, one employed in war to gain information about the enemy and ground. 

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