cringe vs prostrate

cringe

verb
  • To bow or crouch in servility. 

  • 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 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. 

prostrate

verb
  • To lie flat or face-down. 

  • To throw oneself down in submission. 

  • To overcome or overpower. 

  • To cause to lie down, to flatten. 

adj
  • Lying flat, face-down. 

  • Physically incapacitated from environmental exposure or debilitating disease. 

  • Trailing on the ground; procumbent. 

  • Emotionally devastated. 

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