nearest vs proximal

nearest

prep
  • Closest to. 

proximal

adj
  • Closer to the point of attachment or observation. 

  • Closer to the speaker. 

  • Facing toward another tooth. The proximal surfaces of a tooth are those that touch or are close to neighboring teeth. 

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