roper vs spook

roper

noun
  • An undercover informer. 

  • One who ropes goods; a packer. 

  • Synonym of outside man (“accomplice who locates a mark to be swindled by a confidence trickster”) 

  • Any of a variety of monsters with tentacles that they use to capture victims. 

  • A person hired by a gambling establishment to locate potential customers and bring them in. 

spook

noun
  • An undercover agent or spy. 

  • A ghost or phantom. 

  • A hobgoblin. 

  • A scare or fright. 

  • A psychiatrist. 

  • A player who engages in hole carding by attempting to glimpse the dealer's hole card when the dealer checks under an ace or a 10 to see if a blackjack is present. 

  • A metaphysical manifestation; an artificial distinction or construct. 

verb
  • To frighten or make nervous (especially by startling). 

  • To become frightened (by something startling). 

  • To haunt. 

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