flag vs pincushion

flag

noun
  • Any of various plants with sword-shaped leaves, especially irises; specifically, Iris pseudacorus. 

  • The bushy tail of a dog such as a setter. 

  • A mechanical indicator that pops up to draw the pilot's attention to a problem or malfunction. 

  • The game of capture the flag. 

  • A slab of stone; a flagstone, a flat piece of stone used for paving. 

  • Any hard, evenly stratified sandstone, which splits into layers suitable for flagstones. 

  • A sequence of faces of a given polytope, one of each dimension up to that of the polytope (formally, though in practice not always explicitly, including the null face and the polytope itself), such that each face in the sequence is part of the next-higher dimension face. 

  • A flag flown by a ship to show the presence on board of the admiral; the admiral himself, or his flagship. 

  • An exact representation of a flag (for example: a digital one used in websites). 

  • A plot or words of a character in an animation, etc., that would usually lead to a specific outcome or event, not logically or causally, but as a pattern of the animation, etc. 

  • In a command line interface, a command parameter requesting optional behavior or otherwise modifying the action of the command being invoked. 

  • A group of elongated wing feathers in certain hawks. 

  • A hook attached to the stem of a written note that assigns its rhythmic value 

  • The use of a flag, especially to indicate the start of a race or other event. 

  • A group of feathers on the lower part of the legs of certain hawks, owls, etc. 

  • A dark piece of material that can be mounted on a stand to block or shape the light. 

  • A sequence of subspaces of a vector space, beginning with the null space and ending with the vector space itself, such that each member of the sequence (until the last) is a proper subspace of the next. 

  • A variable or memory location that stores a true-or-false, yes-or-no value, typically either recording the fact that a certain event has occurred or requesting that a certain optional action take place. 

  • A piece of cloth, often decorated with an emblem, used as a visual signal or symbol. 

  • A signal flag. 

  • A slice of turf; a sod. 

verb
  • To hang loose without stiffness; to bend down, as flexible bodies; to be loose, yielding, limp. 

  • To signal (an event). 

  • To furnish or deck out with flags. 

  • To convey (a message) by means of flag signals. 

  • To defeat (an opponent) on time, especially in a blitz game. 

  • To enervate; to exhaust the vigour or elasticity of. 

  • To mark with a flag, especially to indicate the importance of something. 

  • To penalize for an infraction. 

  • To fail, such as a class or an exam. 

  • To pave with flagstones. 

  • To weaken, become feeble. 

  • To set a program variable to true. 

  • To note, mark or point out for attention. 

  • To decoy (game) by waving a flag, handkerchief, etc. to arouse the animal's curiosity. 

  • To signal to, especially to stop a passing vehicle etc. 

  • To point the muzzle of a firearm at a person or object one does not intend to fire on. 

  • To lose on time, especially in a blitz game; when using a traditional analog chess clock, a flag would fall when time expired. 

  • To let droop; to suffer to fall, or let fall, into feebleness. 

pincushion

noun
  • A flowering plant in the genus Leucospermum. 

  • The pincushionplant, a flowering plant in the genus Navarretia. 

  • A device, originally like a small, stuffed cushion, designed to have sewing pins and needles stuck into it to store them safely; some modern pincushions hold the objects magnetically. 

  • The dustymaiden, a flowering plant in the genus Chaenactis. 

  • A person who is pricked or stabbed multiple times with sharp objects; specifically, someone who receives regular hypodermic needle injections. 

  • The coral bead plant, coral moss, or English baby tears (Nertera granadensis), an ornamental plant. 

  • A flowering plant in the genus Scabiosa. 

  • The pincushion cactus, of the genera Escobaria or Mammillaria. 

verb
  • To jab or stick repeatedly with one or more sharp objects, as with pins into a pincushion. 

  • To assume the shape of a pincushion; specifically, of the image on a computer display, television, etc., to exhibit pincushion distortion, where the sides curve inwards. 

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