joke vs mess around

joke

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

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

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. 

mess around

verb
  • To joke, kid, or play. 

  • To have a sexual relationship, especially one which is non-commital. 

  • To fiddle idly. 

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