fetch vs return

fetch

verb
  • To retrieve; to bear towards; to go and get. 

  • To bring or get within reach by going; to reach; to arrive at; to attain; to reach by sailing. 

  • To make (a pump) draw water by pouring water into the top and working the handle. 

  • To take (a breath), to heave (a sigh) 

  • To reduce; to throw. 

  • To cause to come; to bring to a particular state. 

  • To obtain as price or equivalent; to sell for. 

  • To bring oneself; to make headway; to veer; as, to fetch about; to fetch to windward. 

intj
  • Minced oath for fuck. 

noun
  • An act of fetching, of bringing something from a distance. 

  • A stratagem or trick; an artifice. 

  • The object of fetching; the source of an attraction; a force, propensity, or quality which attracts. 

  • An area over which wind is blowing (over water) and generating waves. 

  • An act of fetching data. 

  • The apparition of a living person; a person's double, the sight of which is supposedly a sign that they are fated to die soon, a doppelganger; a wraith (“a person's likeness seen just after their death; a ghost, a spectre”). 

  • The length of such an area; the distance a wave can travel across a body of water (without obstruction). 

return

verb
  • To come or go back (to a place or person). 

  • To elect according to the official report of the election officers. 

  • To recur; to come again. 

  • To throw a ball back to the wicket-keeper (or a fielder at that position) from somewhere in the field. 

  • To give in requital or recompense; to requite. 

  • To give something back to its original holder or owner. 

  • To report, or bring back and make known. 

  • To go back in thought, narration, or argument. 

  • To place or put back something where it had been. 

  • To bat the ball back over the net in response to a serve. 

  • To play a card as a result of another player's lead. 

  • To pass (data) back to the calling procedure. 

  • To say in reply; to respond. 

  • To take back something to a vendor for a complete or partial refund. 

  • To relinquish control to the calling procedure. 

noun
  • The act of relinquishing control to the calling procedure. 

  • An answer. 

  • A return value: the data passed back from a called procedure. 

  • A return pipe, returning fluid to a boiler or other central plant (compare with flow pipe, which carries liquid away from a central plant). 

  • The act of catching a ball after a punt and running it back towards the opposing team. 

  • A return ticket. 

  • An item that is returned, e.g. due to a defect, or the act of returning it. 

  • An account, or formal report, of an action performed, of a duty discharged, of facts or statistics, etc.; especially, in the plural, a set of tabulated statistics prepared for general information. 

  • The continuation in a different direction, most often at a right angle, of a building, face of a building, or any member, such as a moulding; applied to the shorter in contradistinction to the longer. 

  • Gain or loss from an investment. 

  • A report of income submitted to a government for purposes of specifying exact tax payment amounts; a tax return. 

  • A throw from a fielder to the wicket-keeper or to another fielder at the wicket. 

  • A carriage return character. 

  • The act of returning. 

  • A short perpendicular extension of a desk, usually slightly lower. 

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