hold off vs persevere

hold off

verb
  • To delay someone or something temporarily; to keep at bay. 

  • To delay commencing (an action until some specified time or event has passed). 

persevere

verb
  • To persist steadfastly in pursuit of an undertaking, task, journey, or goal, even if hindered by distraction, difficulty, obstacles, or discouragement. 

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