agent vs bird dog

agent

noun
  • A cheat who is assisted by dishonest casino staff. 

  • One who exerts power, or has the power to act 

  • One who acts for, or in the place of, another (the principal), by that person's authority; someone entrusted to do the business of another 

  • An active power or cause or substance; something (e.g. biological, chemical, thermal, etc.) that has the power to produce an effect 

  • The participant of a situation that carries out the action in this situation, e.g. "the boy" in the sentences "The boy kicked the ball" and "The ball was kicked by the boy". 

  • Someone who works for an intelligence agency 

  • In the client-server model, the part of the system that performs information preparation and exchange on behalf of a client or server. Especially in the phrase “intelligent agent” it implies some kind of autonomous process which can communicate with other agents to perform some collective task on behalf of one or more humans. 

  • A person who looks for work for another person 

bird dog

noun
  • A person who tries to steal someone else's romantic partner 

  • A dog, especially a pointer, used in shooting to retrieve the dead birds. 

  • A tout. 

  • A person who seeks out real estate investment opportunities in exchange for a fee. 

  • A radar detector (for detecting police speed traps). 

  • A hyperextension exercise performed lying on the knees, with one arm and the opposite leg lifted. 

verb
  • A multiservice tactical brevity code requesting configuration of sensors. 

  • To seek out. 

  • To watch closely. 

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