flipper vs grapple

flipper

verb
  • To lift one or both flippers out of the water and slap the surface of the water. 

noun
  • Television remote control, clicker. 

  • A type of ball bowled by a leg spin bowler, which spins backwards and skids off the pitch with a low bounce. 

  • A flat lever in a pinball machine, triggered by the player to strike the ball and keep it in play. 

  • A kind of false tooth, usually temporary. 

  • A small flat used to support a larger one. 

  • Someone who flips, in the sense of buying a house or other asset and selling it quickly for profit. 

  • Someone who flips in any other sense, for example throwing a coin. 

  • In marine mammals such as whales, a wide flat limb, adapted for swimming. 

  • A flat, wide, paddle-like rubber covering for the foot, used in swimming. 

  • A kitchen spatula. 

grapple

verb
  • To hook and raise with a grapple. 

  • To ponder and intensely evaluate a problem; to struggle to deal with. 

  • To climb (whether by means of a grapple and rope, or by hand, etc). 

  • To fasten, as with a grapple; (by extension) to fix; to join indissolubly. 

  • To wrestle or tussle. 

  • To seize something and hold it firmly. 

  • To use a grapple (for example to attempt to find, hook, and raise a net or cable). 

noun
  • A grapnel (“type of anchor”). 

  • A close hand-to-hand struggle. 

  • A combination of grape and apple flavors. 

  • The act of grappling. (uncountable) 

  • A device consisting of iron claws, attached to the end of a rope, used for grasping and holding an enemy ship prior to boarding; a grappling iron. 

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