crawl vs cringe

crawl

verb
  • To act in a servile manner. 

  • To visit files or web sites in order to index them for searching. 

  • To swim using the crawl stroke. 

  • To move forward slowly, with frequent stops. 

  • To creep; to move slowly on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along the ground. 

  • To move over (an area) slowly, with frequent stops. 

  • To move over (an area) on hands and knees. 

  • Followed by with: see crawl with. 

  • To feel a swarming sensation. 

noun
  • A rapid swimming stroke with alternate overarm strokes and a fluttering kick. 

  • A very slow pace. 

  • The act of moving slowly on hands and knees, etc. 

  • A piece of horizontally or vertically scrolling text overlaid on the main image. 

  • The act of sequentially visiting a series of similar establishments (i.e., a bar crawl). 

  • A pen or enclosure of stakes and hurdles for holding fish. 

cringe

verb
  • To act in an obsequious or servile manner. 

  • 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. 

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

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. 

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