gammon vs spike

gammon

verb
  • To beat by a gammon (without the opponent bearing off a stone). 

  • To lash with ropes (on a ship). 

  • To cure bacon by salting. 

noun
  • Backgammon (the game itself). 

  • A rope fastening a bowsprit to the stem of a ship (usually called a gammoning). 

  • A victory in backgammon achieved when the opponent has not borne off a single stone. 

  • A cut of quick-cured pork leg. 

  • A middle-aged or older right-wing, reactionary white man, or such men collectively. 

spike

verb
  • To attack from, usually, above the height of the net with the intent to send the ball straight to the floor of the opponent or off the hands of the opposing block. 

  • To render (a gun) unusable by driving a metal spike into its touch hole. 

  • To slam the football to the ground, usually in celebration of scoring a touchdown, or to stop expiring time on the game clock after snapping the ball as to save time for the losing team to attempt to score the tying or winning points. 

  • To set or furnish with spikes. 

  • To discard; to decide not to publish or make public. 

  • To covertly put alcohol or another intoxicating substance into a drink. 

  • To inject a drug with a syringe. 

  • To fix on a spike. 

  • To increase sharply. 

  • To embed nails into (a tree) so that any attempt to cut it down will damage equipment or injure people. 

  • To add a small amount of one substance to another. 

  • To fasten with spikes, or long, large nails. 

noun
  • A mark indicating where a prop or other item should be placed on stage. 

  • A kind of inflorescence in which sessile flowers are arranged on an unbranched elongated axis. 

  • An adolescent male deer. 

  • A small project that uses the simplest possible program to explore potential solutions. 

  • A surge in power or in the price of a commodity, etc.; any sudden and brief change that would be represented by a sharp peak on a graph. 

  • A running shoe with spikes in the sole to provide grip. 

  • Spike lavender. 

  • Anything resembling such a nail in shape. 

  • The rod-like protrusion from a woman's high-heeled shoe that elevates the heel. 

  • A sort of very large nail. 

  • An attack from, usually, above the height of the net performed with the intent to send the ball straight to the floor of the opponent or off the hands of the opposing block. 

  • Synonym of endpin. 

  • A sharp peak in a graph. 

  • A piece of pointed metal etc. set with points upward or outward. 

  • A long nail for storing papers by skewering them; (by extension) the metaphorical place where rejected newspaper articles are sent. 

  • The casual ward of a workhouse. 

  • An ear of corn or grain. 

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