curtail vs put a monkey wrench in the works of

curtail

noun
  • A scroll termination, as of a step, etc. 

verb
  • To shorten or abridge the duration of something; to truncate. 

  • To limit or restrict, keep in check. 

put a monkey wrench in the works of

How often have the words curtail and put a monkey wrench in the works of occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )