allow vs blackball

allow

verb
  • To not bar or obstruct. 

  • To render physically possible. 

  • To grant, give, admit, accord, afford, or yield; to let one have. 

  • To acknowledge; to accept as true; to concede; to accede to an opinion. 

  • To grant license to; to permit; to consent to. 

  • To grant (something) as a deduction or an addition; especially to abate or deduct. 

  • To take into account by making an allowance. 

  • To decide (a request) in favour of the party who raised it; to grant victory to a party regarding (a request). 

blackball

verb
  • To ostracize. 

  • To vote against, especially in an exclusive organization. 

noun
  • A black ball used to indicate such a negative vote. 

  • A rejection; a vote against admitting someone. 

  • A kind of large black sweet; a niggerball. 

  • A game, a standardized version of the English version of eight-ball. 

  • A substance for blacking shoes, boots, etc. or for taking impressions of engraved work. 

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