astern vs fore

astern

adv
  • Behind (a vessel); in the rear. 

  • In the direction of the stern; backward (motion); to the rear. 

adj
  • Behind a vessel; having a bearing of 180 degrees from ahead. 

fore

adv
  • In or towards the bows of a ship. 

  • In the part that precedes or goes first; opposed to aft, after, back, behind, etc. 

noun
  • The front; the forward part of something; the foreground. 

adj
  • Forward; situated towards the front (of something). 

intj
  • An exclamation yelled to inform players a ball is moving in their direction. 

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