lay waste vs raze

lay waste

verb
  • To completely destroy, especially of a geographical area or region. 

  • simple past tense of lie waste 

raze

verb
  • To destroy; to strike out of existence; to obliterate. 

  • To scrape as if with a razor. 

  • To demolish; to level to the ground. 

noun
  • A swinging fence in a watercourse to prevent cattle passing through. 

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