graze vs kerf

graze

noun
  • A light abrasion; a slight scratch. 

  • The act of grazing; a scratching or injuring lightly on passing. 

  • The act of animals feeding from pasture. 

verb
  • To cause a slight wound to; to scratch. 

  • To feed or supply (cattle, sheep, etc.) with grass; to furnish pasture for. 

  • To eat small amounts of food periodically throughout the day, rather than at fixed mealtimes, often not in response to hunger. 

  • To yield grass for grazing. 

  • To feed on; to eat (growing herbage); to eat grass from (a pasture) 

  • To rub or touch lightly the surface of (a thing) in passing. 

  • To tend (cattle, etc.) while grazing. 

  • To shoplift by consuming food or drink items before reaching the checkout. 

kerf

noun
  • The groove or slit created by cutting or sawing something; an incision. 

  • The portion or quantity (e.g. of wood, hay, turf, wool, etc.) removed or cut off in a given stroke. 

  • The distance between diverging saw teeth. 

  • The flattened, cut-off end of a branch or tree; a stump or sawn-off cross-section. 

verb
  • To cut a piece of wood or other material with several kerfs to allow it to be bent. 

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