not worth a whistle vs nugatory

not worth a whistle

adj
  • Worthless or pointless. 

nugatory

adj
  • Ineffective, invalid or futile. 

  • Having no force, inoperative, ineffectual. 

  • Trivial, trifling or of little importance. 

  • Removable from a computer program with safety, but harmless if retained. 

How often have the words not worth a whistle and nugatory occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )