kerf vs nick

kerf

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

noun
  • 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. 

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

nick

verb
  • To make ragged or uneven, as by cutting nicks or notches in; to deface, to mar. 

  • To make a cut at the side of the face. 

  • To make a nick or notch in; to cut or scratch in a minor way. 

  • To steal. 

  • To arrest. 

  • To make a crosscut or cuts on the underside of (the tail of a horse, in order to make the animal carry it higher). 

noun
  • The point where the wall of the court meets the floor. 

  • One of the single-stranded DNA segments produced during nick translation. 

  • Often in the expressions in bad nick and in good nick: condition, state. 

  • A police station or prison. 

  • A small deflection of the ball off the edge of the bat, often going to the wicket-keeper for a catch. 

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