construe vs scratch the surface

construe

verb
  • To infer. 

  • To translate. 

  • To admit of grammatical analysis. 

  • To interpret or explain the meaning of something. 

  • To analyze the grammatical structure of a clause or sentence; to parse. 

noun
  • An interpretation. 

  • A translation. 

scratch the surface

verb
  • To barely begin; to see or do only a fraction of what is possible. 

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