exceptional vs first-rate

exceptional

adj
  • Better than the average; superior due to exception or rarity. 

  • Corresponding to something of lower dimension under a birational correspondence. 

  • Forming an exception; not ordinary; uncommon; rare. 

noun
  • An exception, or something having an exceptional value 

first-rate

adj
  • Superb, exceptional; of the best sort; very high quality. 

  • Of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having at least 100 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 850–875, and weighing approximately 2,500 tons burthen. 

noun
  • A first-rate ship of the line. 

How often have the words exceptional and first-rate occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )