dust vs grit

dust

verb
  • To remove dust from. 

  • To remove dust; to clean by removing dust. 

  • To spray or cover something with fine powder or liquid. 

  • To leave; to rush off. 

  • To kill. 

  • Of a bird, to cover itself in sand or dry, dusty earth. 

  • To reduce to a fine powder; to levigate. 

noun
  • The act of cleaning by dusting. 

  • Submicron particles in outer space, largely silicates and carbon compounds, that contribute greatly to extinction at visible wavelengths. 

  • The earthy remains of bodies once alive; the remains of the human body. 

  • A disturbance or uproar. 

  • A low or mean condition. 

  • Something worthless. 

  • Fine, dry particles of matter found in the air and covering the surface of objects, typically consisting of soil lifted up by the wind, pollen, hair, etc. 

  • The earth, as the resting place of the dead. 

  • A totally disconnected set of points with a fractal structure. 

grit

verb
  • To cover with grit. 

  • Apparently only in grit one's teeth: to clench, particularly in reaction to pain or anger. 

noun
  • A hard, coarse-grained siliceous sandstone; gritstone. Also, a finer sharp-grained sandstone, e.g., grindstone grit. 

  • Strength of mind; great courage or fearlessness; fortitude. 

  • A collection of hard small materials, such as dirt, ground stone, debris from sandblasting or other such grinding, or swarf from metalworking. 

  • Coarsely ground corn or hominy used as porridge. 

  • Inedible particles in food. 

  • Husked but unground oats. 

  • A measure of the relative coarseness of an abrasive material such as sandpaper, the smaller the number the coarser the abrasive. 

  • Sand or a sand–salt mixture spread on wet and, especially, icy roads and footpaths to improve traction. 

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