sad vs tragic

sad

adj
  • Causing sorrow; lamentable. 

  • Soggy (to refer to pastries). 

  • Of colours: dark, deep; later, sombre, dull. 

  • Appearing sorrowful. 

  • Feeling sorrow; sorrowful, mournful. 

  • Poor in quality, bad; shameful, deplorable; later, regrettable, poor. 

  • Unfashionable; socially inadequate or undesirable. 

tragic

adj
  • Causing great sadness or suffering. 

  • Cringeworthy; tryhard; unhip; embarrassing; hopeless; indicative of (or having) a chronic lack of self-awareness. 

  • Having been the victim of a tragedy. 

  • Relating to tragedy in a literary work. 

noun
  • An obsessive fan, a superfan 

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