hawthorn vs thorn

hawthorn

noun
  • Any of various shrubs and small trees of the genus Crataegus having small, apple-like fruits and thorny branches 

thorn

noun
  • Any shrub or small tree that bears thorns, especially a hawthorn. 

  • That which pricks or annoys; anything troublesome. 

  • A letter of Latin script (capital: Þ, small: þ), borrowed from the futhark; today used only in Icelandic to represent the voiceless dental fricative, but originally used in several early Germanic scripts, including Old English where it represented the dental fricatives that are today written th (Old English did not have phonemic voicing distinctions for fricatives). 

  • A sharp protective spine of a plant. 

verb
  • To pierce with, or as if with, a thorn (sharp pointed object). 

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