preening vs spruce

preening

noun
  • A grooming or posturing. 

spruce

verb
  • To tease. 

  • To make oneself spruce (neat and elegant in appearance). 

  • To arrange neatly; tidy up. 

adj
  • Smart, trim, and elegant in appearance; fastidious (said of a person). 

noun
  • Made of the wood of the spruce. 

  • The wood of a spruce. 

  • Any of various large coniferous evergreen trees or shrubs from the genus Picea, found in northern temperate and boreal regions; originally and more fully spruce fir. 

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