act out vs joke

act out

verb
  • To express ideas or desires through actions rather than words. 

  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see act, out. 

  • To perform a scene from a play, a charade or an exercise. 

  • To perform a fantasy in reality. 

  • To perform something specific. 

  • To express one's feelings through disruptive actions. 

joke

verb
  • To do or say something for amusement rather than seriously. 

  • To dupe in a friendly manner for amusement; to mess with, play with. 

noun
  • An amusing story. 

  • The root cause or main issue, especially an unexpected one 

  • A laughably worthless thing or person; a sham. 

  • Something that is far easier or far less challenging than expected. 

  • Something said or done for amusement, not in seriousness. 

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