discard vs maintain

discard

verb
  • To dismiss from employment, confidence, or favour; to discharge. 

  • To throw away, to reject. 

  • To make a discard; to throw out a card. 

noun
  • A temporary variable used to receive a value of no importance and unable to be read later. 

  • Anything discarded. 

  • A discarded playing card in a card game. 

maintain

verb
  • To keep up; to preserve; to uphold (a state, condition etc.). 

  • To declare or affirm (a clause) to be true; to assert. 

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