muddle vs pickle

muddle

verb
  • To dabble in mud. 

  • To mash slightly for use in a cocktail. 

  • To think and act in a confused, aimless way. 

  • To cloud or stupefy; to render stupid with liquor; to intoxicate partially. 

  • To mix together, to mix up; to confuse. 

  • To make turbid or muddy. 

  • To waste or misuse, as one does who is stupid or intoxicated. 

noun
  • A mixture of crushed ingredients, as prepared with a muddler. 

  • A mixture; a confusion; a garble. 

pickle

verb
  • To pour brine over a person after flogging them, as a method of punishment. 

  • To preserve food (or sometimes other things) in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution. 

  • To eat sparingly. 

  • To pilfer. 

  • To remove high-temperature scale and oxidation from metal with heated (often sulphuric) industrial acid. 

  • To serialize. 

noun
  • A difficult situation; peril. 

  • A sweet, vinegary pickled chutney popular in Britain. 

  • A mildly mischievous loved one. 

  • A penis. 

  • A bath of dilute sulphuric or nitric acid, etc., to remove burnt sand, scale, rust, etc., from the surface of castings, or other articles of metal, or to brighten them or improve their colour. 

  • In an optical landing system, the hand-held controller connected to the lens, or apparatus on which the lights are mounted. 

  • Any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish. 

  • A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown 

  • A kernel; a grain (of salt, sugar, etc.) 

  • A pipe for smoking methamphetamine. 

  • The brine used for preserving food. 

  • A small or indefinite quantity or amount (of something); a little, a bit, a few. Usually in partitive construction, frequently without "of"; a single grain or kernel of wheat, barley, oats, sand or dust. 

  • A rundown. 

  • A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup. 

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