brace vs give

brace

verb
  • To draw tight; to tighten; to put in a state of tension; to strain; to strengthen. 

  • To bind or tie closely; to fasten tightly. 

  • To furnish with braces; to support; to prop. 

  • To stop someone for questioning, usually said of police. 

  • To confront with questions, demands or requests. 

  • To prepare for something bad, such as an impact or blow. 

  • To place in a position for resisting pressure; to hold firmly. 

  • To swing round the yards of a square rigged ship, using braces, to present a more efficient sail surface to the direction of the wind. 

noun
  • Harness; warlike preparation. 

  • That which holds anything tightly or supports it firmly; a bandage or a prop. 

  • A cord, ligament, or rod, for producing or maintaining tension. 

  • The state of being braced or tight; tension. 

  • A piece of material used to transmit, or change the direction of, weight or pressure; any one of the pieces, in a frame or truss, which divide the structure into triangular parts. It may act as a tie, or as a strut, and serves to prevent distortion of the structure, and transverse strains in its members. A boiler brace is a diagonal stay, connecting the head with the shell. 

  • A system of wires, brackets, and elastic bands used to correct crooked teeth or to reduce overbite. 

  • Straps or bands to sustain trousers; suspenders. 

  • Two goals scored by one player in a game. 

  • A pair, a couple; originally used of dogs, and later of animals generally (e.g., a brace of conies) and then other things, but rarely human persons. (The plural in this sense is unchanged.) In British use (as plural), this is a particularly common reference to game birds. 

  • A curved, pointed line, also known as "curly bracket": { or } connecting two or more words or lines, which are to be considered together, such as in {role, roll}; in music, used to connect staves. 

  • A rope reeved through a block at the end of a yard, by which the yard is moved horizontally; also, a rudder gudgeon. 

  • A curved instrument or handle of iron or wood, for holding and turning bits, etc.; a bitstock. 

  • A thong used to regulate the tension of a drum. 

  • The mouth of a shaft. 

give

verb
  • To yield or collapse under pressure or force. 

  • To lead (onto or into). 

  • To carry out (a physical interaction) with (something). 

  • To cause (someone) to have; produce in (someone); effectuate. 

  • To communicate or announce (advice, tidings, etc.); to pronounce or utter (an opinion, a judgment, a shout, etc.). 

  • To grant power, permission, destiny, etc. (especially to a person); to allot; to allow. 

  • To allow or admit by way of supposition; to concede. 

  • To cause (a sensation or feeling) to exist in. 

  • To cause (a disease or condition) in, or to transmit (a disease or condition) to. 

  • To devote or apply (oneself). 

  • To cause; to make; used with the infinitive. 

  • To pledge. 

  • To exhibit as a product or result; to produce; to yield. 

  • To exceed expectations. 

  • To pass (something) into (someone's hand, etc.). 

  • To be going on, to be occurring; Only used in what gives? 

  • To estimate or predict (a duration or probability) for (something). 

  • To provide (something) to (someone), to allow or afford. 

  • To make a present or gift of. 

  • To transfer one's possession or holding of (something) to (someone). 

  • To attribute; to assign; to adjudge. 

  • To provide, as, a service or a broadcast. 

noun
  • The amount of bending that something undergoes when a force is applied to it; a tendency to yield under pressure; resilience. 

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