accomplice vs confederate

accomplice

noun
  • A cooperator. 

  • An associate in the commission of a crime; a participator in an offense, whether a principal or an accessory. 

confederate

noun
  • An accomplice in a plot. 

  • A member of a confederacy. 

  • An actor who participates in a psychological experiment pretending to be a subject but in actuality working for the researcher. 

adj
  • of, relating to, or united in a confederacy 

  • banded together; allied. 

verb
  • To combine in a confederacy. 

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