boast vs cringe

boast

noun
  • A shot where the ball is driven off a side wall and then strikes the front wall. 

  • A brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself. 

  • Something that one brags about. 

verb
  • To speak of with pride, vanity, or exultation, with a view to self-commendation; to extol. 

  • To play a boast shot. 

  • To dress, as a stone, with a broad chisel. 

  • To brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself. 

  • To possess something special (e.g. as a feature). 

  • To shape roughly as a preparation for the finer work to follow; to cut to the general form required. 

cringe

verb
  • To experience an inward feeling of disgust, embarrassment, or fear; (by extension) to feel very embarrassed. 

  • To cower, flinch, recoil, shrink, or tense, as in disgust, embarrassment, or fear. 

  • To bow or crouch in servility. 

  • To act in an obsequious or servile manner. 

noun
  • A gesture or posture of cringing (recoiling or shrinking). 

  • An act or disposition of servile obeisance. 

  • A crick (“painful muscular cramp or spasm of some part of the body”). 

  • Awkwardness or embarrassment which causes an onlooker to cringe; cringeworthiness. 

adj
  • Inducing awkwardness, embarrassment, or secondhand embarrassment; cringemaking, cringeworthy, cringy. 

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