flounder vs fossick

flounder

verb
  • To be in serious difficulty. 

  • To flop around as a fish out of water. 

  • He gave a good speech, but floundered when audience members asked questions he could not answer well. 

  • To make clumsy attempts to move or regain one's balance. 

  • To act clumsily or confused; to struggle or be flustered. 

noun
  • A bootmaker's tool for crimping boot fronts. 

  • A European species of flatfish having dull brown colouring with reddish-brown blotches; fluke, European flounder, Platichthys flesus. 

  • Any of various flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae or Bothidae. 

fossick

verb
  • To be troublesome. 

  • To search for gems, gold, etc., on the surface or in abandoned workings. 

  • To search for something; to rummage. 

  • To elicit information; to ferret out. 

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