conspiracy vs ruse

conspiracy

noun
  • The act of two or more persons, called conspirators, working secretly to obtain some goal, usually understood with negative connotations. 

  • A situation in which different phonological or grammatical rules lead to similar or related outcomes. 

  • A group of lemurs. 

  • A conspiracy theory; a hypothesis alleging conspiracy. 

  • An agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future. 

  • A group of ravens. 

verb
  • To conspire. 

ruse

noun
  • An action intended to deceive; a trick. 

  • Cunning, guile, trickery. 

verb
  • To deceive or trick using a ruse. 

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