captain vs stern

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. 

stern

verb
  • To propel or move backward or stern-first in the water. 

noun
  • A bird, the black tern. 

  • The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog. 

  • The hinder part of anything. 

  • The post of management or direction. 

  • The rear part or after end of a ship or vessel. 

adj
  • Grim and forbidding in appearance. 

  • Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner. 

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