excel in vs understand

excel in

understand

verb
  • To believe, to think one grasps sufficiently despite potentially incomplete knowledge. 

  • To stand underneath, to support. 

  • To grasp a concept fully in one's mind, especially (of words, statements, art, etc.) to be aware of the meaning of and (of people) to be aware of the intent of. 

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