hireling vs workhorse

hireling

noun
  • A horse for hire. 

  • Someone who does a job purely for money, rather than out of interest in the work itself. 

  • An employee who is hired, often to perform unpleasant tasks with little independence. 

workhorse

noun
  • A horse used primarily for manual labor; a draft horse. 

  • Anyone or anything that does a lot of work; something or someone who works consistently or regularly. 

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