rank vs sheer

rank

adj
  • Strong of its kind or in character; unmitigated; virulent; thorough; utter (used of negative things). 

  • Strong in growth; growing with vigour or rapidity, hence, coarse or gross. 

  • Complete, used as an intensifier (usually negative, referring to incompetence). 

  • Strong to the senses; offensive; noisome. 

  • Having a very strong and bad taste or odor. 

  • Causing strong growth; producing luxuriantly; rich and fertile. 

  • Suffering from overgrowth or hypertrophy; plethoric. 

  • Gross, disgusting. 

verb
  • To have a ranking. 

  • To place abreast, or in a line. 

  • To take rank of; to outrank. 

  • To assign a suitable place in a class or order; to classify. 

noun
  • A hierarchical level in an organization such as the military. 

  • One of the eight horizontal lines of squares on a chessboard (i.e., those identified by a number). 

  • The maximal number of linearly independent columns (or rows) of a matrix. 

  • The maximum quantity of D-linearly independent elements of a module (over an integral domain D). 

  • The size of any basis of a given matroid. 

  • One's position in a list sorted by a shared property such as physical location, population, or quality. 

  • The level of one's position in a class-based society. 

  • The dimensionality of an array (computing) or tensor. 

  • In a pipe organ, a set of pipes of a certain quality for which each pipe corresponds to one key or pedal. 

  • A level in a scientific taxonomy system. 

  • A category of people, such as those who share an occupation or belong to an organisation. 

  • A row of people or things organized in a grid pattern, often soldiers. 

sheer

adj
  • Downright; complete; pure. 

  • Used to emphasize the amount or degree of something. 

  • Very steep; almost vertical or perpendicular. 

  • Very thin or transparent. 

verb
  • To swerve from a course. 

noun
  • A sheer curtain or fabric. 

  • An abrupt swerve from the course of a ship. 

  • The curve of the main deck or gunwale from bow to stern. 

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