fill-in vs second-stringer

fill-in

noun
  • A temporary replacement for another, especially at a job. 

  • Something added to fill a gap. 

  • A substitution. 

  • An intermediate result that must be stored temporarily during the course of a sparse matrix computation. 

  • A musical embellishment (usually percussion) that is added to connect musical phrases. 

  • A product category that is used to complete a range or variety of a product line. 

  • Something added to increase the size of something; padding or filler. 

  • A question or puzzle in which one is expected to fill in a missing part of something. 

second-stringer

noun
  • A person who is not good enough to be considered proficient but may be useful as a backup. 

  • A person who plays second string. A person who is kept on a sports team as a backup in case a "first-string" player is unavailable. 

How often have the words fill-in and second-stringer occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )