boilerplate vs utility

boilerplate

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. 

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

  • Syndicated material. 

  • 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. 

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

utility

adj
  • Functional rather than attractive. 

  • containing or intended for any of a building’s often-utility-related commodity transport, such as pipes or wires, or converting equipment, such as furnaces, water tanks or heaters, circuit breakers, central air conditioning units, laundry facilities, etc. 

  • Having to do with, or owned by, a service provider. 

noun
  • A software program designed to perform a single task or a small range of tasks, often to help manage and tune computer hardware, an operating system or application software. 

  • The ability to play multiple positions. 

  • The state or condition of being useful; usefulness. 

  • The ability of a commodity to satisfy needs or wants; the satisfaction experienced by the consumer of that commodity. 

  • Well-being, satisfaction, pleasure, or happiness. 

  • Something that is useful. 

  • A natural or legal areal monopoly distributer of a commodity (less often a service) delivered in continuous flows to multiple consumers from a common physical, infrastructural network, such as an electric company or water company; or, the securities of such a provider. 

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