captain vs skipper

captain

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

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

verb
  • To act as captain 

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

skipper

noun
  • The master of a ship. 

  • The cheese maggot, the larva of a cheese fly (family Piophilidae), which leaps to escape predators. 

  • A barn or shed in which to shelter for the night. 

  • A coach, director, or other leader. 

  • One who jumps rope. 

  • Any of various butterflies of the families Hesperiidae and its subfamily Megathyminae, having a hairy mothlike body, hooked tips on the antennae, and a darting flight pattern. 

  • A person who skips, or fails to attend class. 

  • The captain of a sports team such as football, cricket, rugby or curling. 

  • Any of several marine fishes that often leap above water, especially Cololabis saira, the Pacific saury. 

verb
  • To captain a ship or a sports team. 

  • To take shelter in a barn or shed. 

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