altar vs prothesis

altar

noun
  • A table or similar flat-topped structure used for religious rites. 

  • A raised area around an altar in a church; the sanctuary. 

  • Any (real or notional) place where something is worshipped or sacrificed to. 

prothesis

noun
  • Credence table. 

  • The preparation and preliminary oblation of the Eucharistic bread and wine in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. 

  • The prepending of phonemes at the beginning of a word without changing its morphological structure, as in Spanish esfera from Latin sphaera (“sphere”) (without prothesis the word would have become *sfera). 

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