boilerplate vs outline

boilerplate

noun
  • Syndicated material. 

  • A sheet of copper or steel used in the construction of a boiler. 

  • The rating plate or nameplate required to be affixed to a boiler by the Boiler Explosions Act (1882). 

  • Standard text or program code used routinely and added with a text editor or word processor; text of a legal or official nature added to documents or labels. 

  • Hard, icy snow which may be dangerous to ski on. 

  • Formulaic or hackneyed language. 

  • A plate attached to industrial machinery, identifying information such as manufacturer, model number, serial number, and power requirements. 

adj
  • Describing text or other material of a standard or routine nature. 

  • Used to refer to a non-functional spacecraft used to test configuration and procedures. 

verb
  • To store (standard text) so that it can easily be retrieved for reuse. 

outline

noun
  • A preliminary plan for a project. 

  • A line marking the boundary of an object figure. 

  • The outer shape of an object or figure. 

  • A prose telling of a story intended to be turned into a screenplay; generally longer and more detailed than a treatment. 

  • A sketch or drawing in which objects are delineated in contours without shading. 

  • A general description of some subject. 

  • A statement summarizing the important points of a text. 

  • A setline or trotline. 

verb
  • To optimize for size by replacing repeated code fragments with function calls. 

  • To draw an outline of. 

  • To summarize. 

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