contact vs encounter

contact

verb
  • To establish communication with something or someone. 

  • To touch; to come into physical contact with. 

noun
  • The act of touching physically; being in close association. 

  • The situation of being within sight of something; visual contact. 

  • The establishment of communication (with). 

  • A contact lens. 

  • The plane between two adjacent bodies of dissimilar rock. 

  • A device designed for repetitive connections. 

  • Contact juggling. 

  • A nodule designed to connect a device with something else. 

  • Someone who can be contacted, or with whom one is in communication. 

encounter

verb
  • To confront (someone or something) face to face. 

  • To execute someone extrajudicially. 

  • To meet (someone) or find (something), especially unexpectedly. 

  • To engage in conflict, as with an enemy. 

noun
  • A sexual encounter; sexual activity, especially unplanned or unexpected, between people not in a sexual relationship, that usually does not lead to the establishment of a relationship, and may or may not happen again. A sexual encounter could be consensual or non-consensual; in the latter case, it is a sexual assault. A consensual sexual encounter that happens only once is commonly known as a one-night stand. 

  • A hostile, often violent meeting; a confrontation, skirmish, or clash, as between combatants. 

  • A meeting, especially one that is unplanned or unexpected. 

  • A match between two opposing sides. 

  • An extrajudicial killing or execution. 

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