burl vs gnarl

burl

noun
  • A knot or lump in thread or cloth. 

  • Wood of a mottled veneer, usually cut from such a growth. 

  • A tree growth in which the grain has grown in a deformed manner; a burr knot. 

verb
  • To remove the knots in cloth. 

gnarl

noun
  • Something resembling a knot in wood, such as in stone or limbs. 

  • A knot in wood; a large or hard knot, or a protuberance with twisted grain, on a tree. 

verb
  • To knot or twist something. 

  • To snarl or growl; to gnar. 

adj
  • Gnarled, knotty, twisted. 

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