boil vs fritter

boil

noun
  • A dish of boiled food, especially seafood. 

  • The point at which fluid begins to change to a vapour; the boiling point. 

  • A social event at which people gather to boil and eat food, especially seafood. (Compare a bake or clambake.) 

  • The collective noun for a group of hawks. 

  • A localized accumulation of pus in the skin, resulting from infection. 

verb
  • To form, or separate, by boiling or evaporation. 

  • To feel uncomfortably hot. 

  • To be moved or excited with passion; to be hot or fervid. 

  • To bring to a boil, to heat so as to cause the contents to boil. 

  • To begin to turn into a gas, seethe. 

  • To heat to the point where it begins to turn into a gas. 

  • To be uncomfortably hot. 

  • To cook in boiling water. 

  • To be agitated like boiling water; to bubble; to effervesce. 

fritter

noun
  • A dish made by deep-frying food coated in batter. 

  • A fragment; a shred; a small piece. 

verb
  • To break into small pieces or fragments. 

  • To cut (meat etc.) into small pieces for frying. 

  • To sinter. 

  • To squander or waste time, money, or other resources; e.g. occupy oneself idly or without clear purpose, to tinker with an unimportant part of a project, to dally, sometimes as a form of procrastination. 

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