punch vs slug

punch

noun
  • A blow from something other than the fist. 

  • A mechanism for punching holes in paper or other thin material. 

  • A hole or opening created with a punch. 

  • Impact. 

  • Any of various riodinid butterflies of the genus Dodona of Asia. 

  • An extension piece applied to the top of a pile; a dolly. 

  • A prop, as for the roof of a mine. 

  • Power, strength, energy. 

  • A device, generally slender and round, used for creating holes in thin material, for driving an object through a hole in a containing object, or to stamp or emboss a mark or design on a surface. 

  • A hit or strike with one's fist. 

  • A beverage, generally containing a mixture of fruit juice and some other beverage, often alcoholic. 

verb
  • To employ a punch to create a hole in or stamp or emboss a mark on something. 

  • To strike with one's fist. 

  • To thrust against; to poke. 

  • To enter (information) on a device or system. 

  • To herd. 

  • To mark a ticket. 

  • To make holes in something (rail ticket, leather belt, etc) 

  • To operate (a device or system) by depressing a button, key, bar, or pedal, or by similar means. 

  • In winemaking, to perform pigeage: to stamp down grape skins that float to the surface during fermentation. 

  • To hit (a ball or similar object) with less than full force. 

slug

noun
  • A hard blow, usually with the fist. 

  • A title, name or header, a catchline, a short phrase or title to indicate the content of a newspaper or magazine story for editing use. 

  • A bullet or other projectile fired from a firearm; in modern usage, generally refers to a shotgun slug. 

  • The last part of a clean URL, the displayed resource name, similar to a filename. 

  • A black screen. 

  • A motile pseudoplasmodium formed by amoebae working together. 

  • A piece of type metal imprinted by a linotype machine; also a black mark placed in the margin to indicate an error; also said in application to typewriters; type slug. 

  • A ship that sails slowly. 

  • The imperial (English) unit of mass that accelerates by 1 foot per second squared (1 ft/s²) when a force of one pound-force (lbf) is exerted on it. 

  • A solid block or piece of roughly shaped metal. 

  • Any of many terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks, having no (or only a rudimentary) shell. 

  • An accessory to a diesel-electric locomotive, used to increase adhesive weight and allow full power to be applied at a lower speed. It has trucks with traction motors, but lacks a prime mover, being powered by electricity from the mother locomotive, and may or may not have a control cab. 

  • A stranger picked up as a passenger to enable legal use of high occupancy vehicle lanes. 

  • A hitchhiking commuter. 

  • A counterfeit coin, especially one used to steal from vending machines. 

  • A discrete mass of a material that moves as a unit, usually through another material. 

  • A shot of a drink, usually alcoholic. 

verb
  • To hit very hard, usually with the fist. 

  • To drink quickly; to gulp; to down. 

  • To take part in casual carpooling; to form ad hoc, informal carpools for commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking. 

  • To make sluggish. 

  • To become reduced in diameter, or changed in shape, by passing from a larger to a smaller part of the bore of the barrel. 

  • To load with a slug or slugs. 

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