dangle vs tow

dangle

verb
  • To hang or trail something loosely. 

  • Of a patient: to be positioned with the legs hanging over the edge of the bed. 

  • To hang loosely with the ability to swing. 

  • To put forth as a possibility. 

  • The action of performing a move or deke with the puck in order to get past a defender or goalie; perhaps because of the resemblance to dangling the puck on a string. 

  • To position (a patient) in this way. 

noun
  • The action of dangling; a series of complex stick tricks and fakes in order to defeat the defender in style. 

  • An agent of one intelligence agency or group who pretends to be interested in defecting or turning to another intelligence agency or group. 

  • A dangling ornament or decoration. 

tow

verb
  • To pull something behind one using a line or chain; to haul. 

  • To aid someone behind by shielding them from wind resistance. 

noun
  • The short, coarse, less desirable fibres separated by hackling from the finer longer fibres (line). 

  • Something, such as a barge, that is towed. 

  • The act of towing and the condition of being towed. 

  • A rope or cable used in towing. 

  • Something, such as a tugboat, that tows. 

  • A speed increase given by driving in front of another car on a straight, which causes a slipstream for the car behind. 

  • An untwisted bundle of fibres such as cellulose acetate, flax, hemp or jute. 

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