cannonball vs flechette

cannonball

noun
  • A spherical projectile fired from a smoothbore cannon. 

  • The act of jumping (typically into a swimming pool) with the legs bent and the arms wrapped around the knees to create a large splash, mimicking the flight and shape of a cannonball. 

  • An explosive-filled hollow iron sphere fused through a hole and intended to explode at a calculated distance rather than explode on impact. 

  • Something that moves fast, especially a fast train. 

  • A served ball that travels with great speed and describes little or no arc in flight. 

verb
  • To jump or dive into water, performing a cannonball landing. 

  • To career; to move rapidly. 

flechette

noun
  • A small sharp antipersonnel projectile, used as shrapnel, fired from a shotgun, or scattered from an aircraft. 

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