rive vs sever

rive

verb
  • To break apart; to split. 

  • To tear apart by force; to rend; to split; to cleave. 

  • To land. 

  • To burst open; explode; discharge. 

  • To use a technique of splitting or sawing wood radially from a log (e.g. clapboards). 

noun
  • A place torn; a rent; a rift. 

  • A bank or shore. 

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 rive and sever occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )