joke vs prank

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. 

prank

noun
  • A practical joke or mischievous trick. 

verb
  • To make an ostentatious show. 

  • To perform a practical joke on; to trick. 

  • To call someone's phone and promptly hang up 

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