abridge vs prune

abridge

verb
  • To curtail. 

  • Cut short; truncate. 

  • To make shorter; to shorten in duration or extent. 

  • To shorten or contract by using fewer words, yet retaining the sense; to epitomize; to condense. 

prune

verb
  • To cut down or shorten (by the removal of unnecessary material). 

  • To remove excess material from a tree or shrub; to trim, especially to make more healthy or productive. 

  • To remove unnecessary branches from a tree data structure. 

  • To become wrinkled like a dried plum, as the fingers and toes do when kept submerged in water. 

noun
  • The dried, wrinkled fruit of certain species of plum. 

  • Something wrinkly like a prune. 

  • An old woman, especially a wrinkly one. 

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