brace vs retard

brace

verb
  • To place in a position for resisting pressure; to hold firmly. 

  • To bind or tie closely; to fasten tightly. 

  • To furnish with braces; to support; to prop. 

  • To stop someone for questioning, usually said of police. 

  • To confront with questions, demands or requests. 

  • To draw tight; to tighten; to put in a state of tension; to strain; to strengthen. 

  • To prepare for something bad, such as an impact or blow. 

  • To swing round the yards of a square rigged ship, using braces, to present a more efficient sail surface to the direction of the wind. 

noun
  • Harness; warlike preparation. 

  • That which holds anything tightly or supports it firmly; a bandage or a prop. 

  • A cord, ligament, or rod, for producing or maintaining tension. 

  • The state of being braced or tight; tension. 

  • A piece of material used to transmit, or change the direction of, weight or pressure; any one of the pieces, in a frame or truss, which divide the structure into triangular parts. It may act as a tie, or as a strut, and serves to prevent distortion of the structure, and transverse strains in its members. A boiler brace is a diagonal stay, connecting the head with the shell. 

  • A system of wires, brackets, and elastic bands used to correct crooked teeth or to reduce overbite. 

  • Straps or bands to sustain trousers; suspenders. 

  • Two goals scored by one player in a game. 

  • A pair, a couple; originally used of dogs, and later of animals generally (e.g., a brace of conies) and then other things, but rarely human persons. (The plural in this sense is unchanged.) In British use (as plural), this is a particularly common reference to game birds. 

  • A curved, pointed line, also known as "curly bracket": { or } connecting two or more words or lines, which are to be considered together, such as in {role, roll}; in music, used to connect staves. 

  • A rope reeved through a block at the end of a yard, by which the yard is moved horizontally; also, a rudder gudgeon. 

  • A curved instrument or handle of iron or wood, for holding and turning bits, etc.; a bitstock. 

  • A thong used to regulate the tension of a drum. 

  • The mouth of a shaft. 

retard

verb
  • To keep delaying; to continue to hinder; to prevent from progressing. 

  • To put off; to postpone. 

  • To decelerate; to slow down. 

noun
  • Retardation; delay. 

  • A slowing down of the tempo; a ritardando. 

  • A person or being who is extremely stupid or slow to learn. 

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