colossus vs phoenix

colossus

noun
  • Any creature or thing of gigantic size. 

  • Somebody or something very greatly admired and respected. 

  • A statue of gigantic size. The name was especially applied to certain famous statues in antiquity, as the Colossus of Nero in Rome and the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 

phoenix

noun
  • A mythological Chinese chimerical bird whose physical body symbolizes the six celestial bodies; a fenghuang. 

  • A Greek silver coin used briefly from 1828 to 1832, divided into 100 lepta. 

  • A mythological bird, said to be the only one of its kind, which lives for 500 years and then dies by burning to ashes on a pyre of its own making, ignited by the sun. It then arises anew from the ashes. 

  • Anything that is reborn after apparently being destroyed. 

verb
  • To transfer assets from one company to another to dodge liability 

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