put on vs sham

put on

verb
  • To fool, kid, deceive. 

  • To assume, adopt or affect; to behave in a particular way as a pretense. 

  • To don (clothing, equipment, or the like). 

  • To initiate cooking or warming, especially on a stovetop. 

  • To perform for an audience. 

  • To organize a performance for an audience. 

  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see put, on. 

  • To bet on. 

  • To play (a recording). 

sham

verb
  • To deceive, cheat, lie. 

  • To obtrude by fraud or imposition. 

  • To assume the manner and character of; to imitate; to ape; to feign. 

noun
  • A decorative cover for a pillow. 

  • A false front, or removable ornamental covering. 

  • Trickery, hoaxing. 

  • A fake; an imitation that purports to be genuine. 

  • Champagne. 

adj
  • mock 

  • Intended to deceive; false. 

  • counterfeit; unreal 

  • See also Thesaurus:fake 

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