cog vs lay figure

cog

noun
  • An unimportant individual in a greater system. 

  • One of the rough pillars of stone or coal left to support the roof of a mine. 

  • A tooth on a gear. 

  • A projection or tenon at the end of a beam designed to fit into a matching opening of another piece of wood to form a joint. 

  • A small fishing boat. 

  • A trick or deception; a falsehood. 

  • A clinker-built, flat-bottomed, square-rigged mediaeval ship of burden, or war with a round, bulky hull and a single mast, typically 15 to 25 meters in length. 

  • A gear; a cogwheel. 

verb
  • To furnish with a cog or cogs. 

  • To seduce, or draw away, by adulation, artifice, or falsehood; to wheedle; to cozen; to cheat. 

  • To cheat; to play or gamble fraudulently. 

  • Of an electric motor or generator, to snap preferentially to certain positions when not energized. 

  • To plagiarize. 

  • To load (a die) so that it can be used to cheat. 

  • To obtrude or thrust in, by falsehood or deception; to palm off. 

lay figure

noun
  • An unimportant person; a character (especially in fiction) lacking individuality. 

  • A jointed model of the human body used by artists, or to display clothes. 

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