captain vs launch

captain

verb
  • To exercise command of a ship, aircraft or sports team. 

  • To act as captain 

noun
  • An honorific title given to a prominent person. See colonel. 

  • The head boy of a school. 

  • A maître d', a headwaiter. 

  • A chief or leader. 

  • An army officer with a rank between the most senior grade of lieutenant and major. 

  • A naval officer with a rank between commander and commodore. 

  • The person lawfully in command of a ship or other vessel. 

  • One of the athletes on a sports team who is designated to make decisions, and is allowed to speak for his team with a referee or official. 

  • A commissioned officer in the United States Navy, Coast Guard, NOAA Corps, or PHS Corps of a grade superior to a commander and junior to a rear admiral (lower half). A captain is equal in grade or rank to a United States Army, Marine Corps, or Air Force colonel. 

  • The leader of a group of workers. 

launch

verb
  • Of a ship, rocket, balloon, etc.: to depart on a voyage; to take off. 

  • To cause (a vessel) to move or slide from the land or a larger vessel into the water; to set afloat. 

  • To cause (a rocket, balloon, etc., or the payload thereof) to begin its flight upward from the ground. 

  • To throw (a projectile such as a lance, dart or ball); to hurl; to propel with force. 

  • To send out; to start (someone) on a mission or project; to give a start to (something); to put in operation 

  • To start to operate. 

  • To move with force and swiftness like a sliding from the stocks into the water; to plunge; to begin. 

  • To release; to put onto the market for sale 

  • To start (a program or feature); to execute or bring into operation. 

noun
  • The act or fact of launching (a ship/vessel, a project, a new book, etc.). 

  • A boat used to convey guests to and from a yacht. 

  • An open boat of any size powered by steam, petrol, electricity, etc. 

  • The boat of the largest size and/or of most importance belonging to a ship of war, and often called the "captain's boat" or "captain's launch". 

  • The movement of a vessel from land into the water; especially, the sliding on ways from the stocks on which it is built. (Compare: to splash a ship.) 

  • An event held to celebrate the launch of a ship/vessel, project, a new book, etc.; a launch party. 

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