pause vs retard

pause

verb
  • To hesitate; to hold back; to delay. 

  • To take a temporary rest, take a break for a short period after an effort. 

  • To halt the play or playback of, temporarily, so that it can be resumed from the same point. 

  • To interrupt an activity and wait. 

noun
  • A break or paragraph in writing. 

  • Hesitation; suspense; doubt. 

  • A short time for relaxing and doing something else. 

  • A temporary stop or rest; an intermission of action; interruption; suspension; cessation. 

  • In writing and printing, a mark indicating the place and nature of an arrest of voice in reading; a punctuation mark. 

  • take pause: hesitate; give pause: cause to hesitate 

  • A sign indicating continuance of a note or rest. 

retard

verb
  • To keep delaying; to continue to hinder; to prevent from progressing. 

  • To put off; to postpone. 

  • To decelerate; to slow down. 

noun
  • Retardation; delay. 

  • A slowing down of the tempo; a ritardando. 

  • A person or being who is extremely stupid or slow to learn. 

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