gouge vs nick

gouge

verb
  • To make a groove, hole, or mark in by scooping with or as if with a gouge. 

  • To cheat or impose upon; in particular, to charge an unfairly or unreasonably high price. 

  • To use a gouge. 

  • To dig or scoop (something) out with or as if with a gouge; in particular, to use a thumb to push or try to push the eye (of a person) out of its socket. 

noun
  • Soft material lying between the wall of a vein and the solid vein of ore. 

  • A bookbinder's tool with a curved face, used for blind tooling or gilding. 

  • An incising tool that cuts blanks or forms for envelopes, gloves, etc., from leather, paper, or other materials. 

  • An impostor. 

  • Information. 

  • An act of gouging. 

  • A cut or groove, as left by a gouge or something sharp. 

  • A chisel with a curved blade for cutting or scooping channels, grooves, or holes in wood, stone, etc. 

  • A cheat, a fraud; an imposition. 

nick

verb
  • To make ragged or uneven, as by cutting nicks or notches in; to deface, to mar. 

  • To make a cut at the side of the face. 

  • To make a nick or notch in; to cut or scratch in a minor way. 

  • To steal. 

  • To arrest. 

  • To make a crosscut or cuts on the underside of (the tail of a horse, in order to make the animal carry it higher). 

noun
  • The point where the wall of the court meets the floor. 

  • One of the single-stranded DNA segments produced during nick translation. 

  • Often in the expressions in bad nick and in good nick: condition, state. 

  • A police station or prison. 

  • A small deflection of the ball off the edge of the bat, often going to the wicket-keeper for a catch. 

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