rend vs sever

rend

verb
  • To be rent or torn; to become parted; to separate; to split. 

  • To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force; to amputate. 

  • To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to split; to burst 

noun
  • A violent separation of parts. 

sever

verb
  • To suffer disjunction; to be parted or separated. 

  • To disconnect; to disunite; to terminate. 

  • To make a separation or distinction; to distinguish. 

  • To cut free. 

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