freighter vs tow

freighter

noun
  • A vessel used mainly to carry freight; a cargo ship. 

  • One employed in receiving and forwarding freight. 

  • An aircraft used mainly to carry freight; a cargo aircraft or cargo plane. 

  • One for whom freight is transported. 

  • One who loads a ship, or one who charters and loads a ship. 

tow

noun
  • Something, such as a barge, that is towed. 

  • The short, coarse, less desirable fibres separated by hackling from the finer longer fibres (line). 

  • The act of towing and the condition of being towed. 

  • A rope or cable used in towing. 

  • Something, such as a tugboat, that tows. 

  • A speed increase given by driving in front of another car on a straight, which causes a slipstream for the car behind. 

  • An untwisted bundle of fibres such as cellulose acetate, flax, hemp or jute. 

verb
  • To aid someone behind by shielding them from wind resistance. 

  • To pull something behind one using a line or chain; to haul. 

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