breeze vs scud

breeze

noun
  • A light, gentle wind. 

  • An excited or ruffled state of feeling; a flurry of excitement; a disturbance; a quarrel. 

  • Wind blowing across a cricket match, whatever its strength. 

  • Ashes and residue of coal or charcoal, usually from a furnace. See Wikipedia article on Clinker. 

  • Any activity that is easy, not testing or difficult. 

  • A brief workout for a racehorse. 

  • A gadfly; a horsefly; a strong-bodied dipterous insect of the family Tabanidae. 

verb
  • To take a horse on a light run in order to understand the running characteristics of the horse and to observe it while under motion. 

  • To blow gently. 

  • To move casually, in a carefree manner. 

  • To swim near the surface of the water, causing ripples in the surface. 

  • To buzz. 

scud

noun
  • A gust of wind. 

  • The drink Irn-Bru. 

  • A loose formation of small ragged cloud fragments (or fog) not attached to a larger higher cloud layer. 

  • A swift runner. 

  • The act of scudding. 

  • A form of garden hoe. 

  • Any swimming amphipod. 

  • A scab on a wound. 

  • A small flight of larks, or other birds, less than a flock. 

  • Pornography. 

  • A slap; a sharp stroke. 

  • Clouds or rain driven by the wind. 

adj
  • Naked. 

verb
  • To race along swiftly (especially used of clouds). 

  • To skim flat stones so they skip along the water. 

  • To hit or slap. 

  • To speed. 

  • To run, or be driven, before a high wind with no sails set. 

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