nip vs pluck

nip

noun
  • A seizing or closing in upon; a pinching 

  • A hamburger. 

  • A more or less gradual thinning out of a stratum. 

  • Briskly cold weather. 

  • A playful bite. 

  • A small cut, or a cutting off the end. 

  • A small quantity of something edible or a potable liquor. 

  • A nipple, usually of a woman. 

  • A pinch with the nails or teeth. 

  • A blast; a killing of the ends of plants by frost. 

  • A short turn in a rope. 

  • The place of intersection where one roll touches another 

  • A biting sarcasm; a taunt. 

verb
  • To squeeze or pinch. 

  • To annoy, as by nipping. 

  • To make a quick, short journey or errand, usually a round trip. 

  • To blast, as by frost; to check the growth or vigor of; to destroy. 

  • To catch and enclose or compress tightly between two surfaces, or points which are brought together or closed; to pinch; to close in upon. 

  • To taunt. 

  • To benumb [e.g., cheeks, fingers, nose] by severe cold. 

  • To remove by pinching, biting, or cutting with two meeting edges of anything; to clip. 

pluck

noun
  • An instance of plucking or pulling sharply. 

  • Guts, nerve, fortitude or persistence. 

  • The lungs, heart with trachea and often oesophagus removed from slaughtered animals. 

  • Cheap wine. 

verb
  • To take or remove (someone) quickly from a particular place or situation. 

  • To pull something sharply; to pull something out 

  • To pull or twitch sharply. 

  • To remove feathers from a bird. 

  • To play a string instrument pizzicato. 

  • To gently play a single string, e.g. on a guitar, violin etc. 

  • Of a glacier: to transport individual pieces of bedrock by means of gradual erosion through freezing and thawing. 

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