confederate vs rival

confederate

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

  • banded together; allied. 

noun
  • A member of a confederacy. 

  • An accomplice in a plot. 

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

verb
  • To combine in a confederacy. 

rival

noun
  • A competitor (person, team, company, etc.) with the same goal as another, or striving to attain the same thing. Defeating a rival may be a primary or necessary goal of a competitor. 

  • Someone or something with similar claims of quality or distinction as another. 

verb
  • To be equal to, or match, or to surpass another. 

  • To oppose or compete with. 

  • To strive to equal or excel; to emulate. 

adj
  • Having the same pretensions or claims; standing in competition for superiority. 

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