flattery vs joke

flattery

noun
  • An instance of excessive praise. 

  • Excessive praise or approval, which is often insincere and sometimes contrived to win favour. 

joke

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. 

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

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

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