captain vs serve

captain

verb
  • To act as captain 

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

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. 

serve

verb
  • To be in military service. 

  • To be useful to; to meet the needs of. 

  • To be a servant or worker; to perform the duties of a servant or employee; to render service. 

  • To officially deliver (a legal notice, summons etc.). 

  • To be a servant for; to work for, to be employed by. 

  • To be a formal servant for (a god or deity); to worship in an official capacity. 

  • To attractively display something (especially a body part) as part of one's personal appearance. 

  • To wind spun yarn etc. tightly around (a rope or cable, etc.) so as to protect it from chafing or from the weather. 

  • To lead off with the first delivery over the net in tennis, volleyball, ping pong, badminton etc. 

  • To perform (a public obligation). 

  • To set down (food or drink) on the table to be eaten; to bring (food, drink) to a person. 

  • To copulate with (of male animals); to cover. 

  • To present an attractive personal appearance. 

  • To usefully take the place as, instead of something else. 

  • To provide crack cocaine (to), usually by selling, dealing, or distributing. 

  • To have a given use or purpose; to function for something or to do something. 

  • To work through (a given period of time in prison, a sentence). 

  • To evoke something (especially a person) with one's personal appearance. 

  • To make legal service upon (a person named in a writ, summons, etc.) 

  • To work, to operate (a weapon). 

  • To wait upon (someone) at table; to set food and drink in front of, to help (someone) to food, meals etc. 

noun
  • An impressive presentation (especially of a person's appearance). 

  • An act of putting the ball or shuttlecock in play in various games. 

  • A portion of food or drink, a serving. 

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