ensnare vs hook

ensnare

verb
  • To entrap; to catch in a snare or trap. 

  • To entangle; to enmesh. 

hook

verb
  • To ensnare or obligate someone, as if with a hook. 

  • To attach a hook to. 

  • To finesse. 

  • To catch with a hook (hook a fish). 

  • To succeed in heeling the ball back out of a scrum (used particularly of the team's designated hooker). 

  • To engage in the illegal maneuver of hooking (i.e., using the hockey stick to trip or block another player) 

  • To insert in a curved way reminiscent of a hook. 

  • To connect (hook into, hook together). 

  • To engage in prostitution. 

  • To swerve a ball; kick or throw a ball so it swerves or bends. 

  • To play a word perpendicular to another word by adding a single letter to the existing word. 

  • To work yarn into a fabric using a hook; to crochet. 

  • To play a hook shot. 

  • To make addicted; to captivate. 

  • To move or go with a sudden turn. 

  • To seize or pierce with the points of the horns, as cattle in attacking enemies; to gore. 

noun
  • Part of a system's operation that can be intercepted to change or augment its behaviour. 

  • a basketball shot in which the offensive player, usually turned perpendicular to the basket, gently throws the ball with a sweeping motion of his arm in an upward arc with a follow-through which ends over his head. Also called hook shot. 

  • The part of a hinge which is fixed to a post, and on which a door or gate hangs and turns. 

  • A ship's anchor. 

  • Removal or expulsion from a group or activity. 

  • A tie-in to a current event or trend that makes a news story or editorial relevant and timely. 

  • A field sown two years in succession. 

  • A golf shot that (for the right-handed player) curves unintentionally to the left. (See draw, slice, fade.) 

  • A barbed metal hook used for fishing; a fishhook. 

  • A ball that is rolled in a curved line. 

  • A brief, punchy opening statement intended to get attention from an audience, reader, or viewer, and make them want to continue to listen to a speech, read a book, or watch a play. 

  • A type of shot played by swinging the bat in a horizontal arc, hitting the ball high in the air to the leg side, often played to balls which bounce around head height. 

  • A rod bent into a curved shape, typically with one end free and the other end secured to a rope or other attachment. 

  • A loop shaped like a hook under certain written letters, for example, g and j. 

  • A jack (the playing card). 

  • Any of the chevrons denoting rank. 

  • An instance of playing a word perpendicular to a word already on the board, adding a letter to the start or the end of the word to form a new word. 

  • The projecting points of the thighbones of cattle; called also hook bones. 

  • Synonym of shoulder (“the part of a wave that has not yet broken”) 

  • A catchy musical phrase which forms the basis of a popular song. 

  • a háček. 

  • a type of punch delivered with the arm rigid and partially bent and the fist travelling nearly horizontally mesially along an arc 

  • A finesse. 

  • A curveball. 

  • A gimmick or element of a creative work intended to be attention-grabbing for the audience; a compelling idea for a story that will be sure to attract people's attention. 

  • The curved needle used in the art of crochet. 

  • Any of various hook-shaped agricultural implements such as a billhook. 

  • A spit or narrow cape of sand or gravel turned landward at the outer end, such as Sandy Hook in New Jersey. 

  • a diacritical mark shaped like the upper part of a question mark, as in ỏ. 

  • A prostitute. 

  • A snare; a trap. 

  • A knee-shaped wooden join connecting the keel to the stem (post forming the frontmost part of the bow) or the sternpost in cog-like vessels or similar vessels. 

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