kick-off vs starting

kick-off

noun
  • The opening sequence of any event. 

  • The opening kick of each half of a game of football. 

  • The opening sequence of notes in a song, usually played by the song's main instrument, to indicate the beginning of the song. 

starting

noun
  • The act of something that starts. 

How often have the words kick-off and starting occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )