fix vs follow

fix

verb
  • To focus or determine (oneself, on a concept); to fixate. 

  • To make (a contest, vote, or gamble) unfair; to privilege one contestant or a particular group of contestants, usually before the contest begins; to arrange immunity for defendants by tampering with the justice system via bribery or extortion. 

  • To attach; to affix; to hold in place or at a particular time. 

  • To surgically render an animal, especially a pet, infertile. 

  • To render (a photographic impression) permanent by treating with such applications as will make it insensitive to the action of light. 

  • To become fixed; to settle or remain permanently; to cease from wandering; to rest. 

  • To take revenge on, to best; to serve justice on an assumed miscreant. 

  • To convert into a stable or available form. 

  • To become firm, so as to resist volatilization; to cease to flow or be fluid; to congeal; to become hard and malleable, as a metallic substance. 

  • To prevent enemy pawns from advancing by directly opposing the most advanced one with one of one's own pawns so as to threaten to capture any advancing backward pawns. 

  • To mend, to repair. 

  • To prepare (food or drink). 

  • To map a (point or subset) to itself. 

noun
  • fettlings (mixture used to line a furnace) 

  • A prearrangement of the outcome of a supposedly competitive process, such as a sporting event, a game, an election, a trial, or a bid. 

  • A repair or corrective action. 

  • A determination of location. 

  • A difficult situation; a quandary or dilemma; a predicament. 

  • A single dose of an addictive drug administered to a drug user. 

follow

verb
  • To understand, to pay attention to. 

  • To walk in, as a road or course; to attend upon closely, as a profession or calling. 

  • To subscribe to see content from an account on a social media platform. 

  • To live one's life according to (religion, teachings, etc). 

  • To carry out (orders, instructions, etc.). 

  • To be a logical consequence of something. 

  • To watch, to keep track of (reports of) some event or person. 

  • To go or come after in a sequence. 

  • To go after; to pursue; to move behind in the same path or direction, especially with the intent of catching. 

noun
  • In billiards and similar games, a stroke causing a ball to follow another ball after hitting it. 

  • The act of following another user's online activity. 

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