flake vs swab

flake

noun
  • A small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on while calking, etc. 

  • A corrupt arrest, e.g. to extort money for release or merely to fulfil a quota. 

  • A scale of a fish or similar animal 

  • A wire rack for drying fish. 

  • The meat of the gummy shark. 

  • Dogfish. 

  • A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything 

  • A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes. 

  • A paling; a hurdle. 

  • A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living. 

  • A platform of hurdles, or small sticks made fast or interwoven, supported by stanchions, for drying codfish and other things. 

  • A flat turn or tier of rope. 

  • A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone. 

verb
  • To prove unreliable or impractical; to abandon or desert, to fail to follow through. 

  • To plant evidence to facilitate a corrupt arrest. 

  • To break or chip off in a flake. 

  • To hit (another person). 

  • To lay out on a flake for drying. 

  • To store an item such as rope or sail in layers 

swab

noun
  • A mop, especially on a ship. 

  • A sailor; a swabby. 

  • A naval officer's epaulet. 

  • A small piece of soft, absorbent material, such as gauze, used to clean wounds, apply medicine, or take samples of body fluids. Often attached to a stick or wire to aid access. 

  • A piece of material used for cleaning or sampling other items like musical instruments or guns. 

  • A sample taken with a swab (piece of absorbent material). 

verb
  • To use a swab on something, or clean something with a swab. 

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