blade vs shank

blade

verb
  • To stab with a blade 

  • To cut (a person) so as to provoke bleeding. 

  • To furnish with a blade. 

  • To put forth or have a blade. 

  • To skate on rollerblades. 

noun
  • A throw characterized by a tight parabolic trajectory due to a steep lateral attitude. 

  • The thin, flat part of a plant leaf, attached to a stem (petiole). The lamina. 

  • A homosexual, usually male. 

  • An artificial foot used by amputee athletes, shaped like an upside-down interrogation mark. 

  • The narrow leaf of a grass or cereal. 

  • One of a series of small plates that make up the aperture or the shutter of a camera. 

  • The four large shell plates on the sides, and the five large ones of the middle, of the carapace of the sea turtle, which yield the best tortoise shell. 

  • The part of the tongue just behind the tip, used to make laminal consonants. 

  • A piece of prepared, sharp-edged stone, often flint, at least twice as long as it is wide; a long flake of ground-edge stone or knapped vitreous stone. 

  • A cut of beef from near the shoulder blade (part of the chuck). 

  • The rudder, daggerboard, or centerboard of a vessel. 

  • A bulldozer or surface-grading machine with mechanically adjustable blade that is nominally perpendicular to the forward motion of the vehicle. 

  • The (typically sharp-edged) part of a knife, sword, razor, or other tool with which it cuts. 

  • The flat functional end or piece of a propeller, oar, hockey stick, chisel, screwdriver, skate, etc. 

  • Thin plate, foil. 

  • The principal rafters of a roof. 

  • A blade server. 

  • An exterior product of vectors. (The product may have more than two factors. Also, a scalar counts as a 0-blade, a vector as a 1-blade; an exterior product of k vectors may be called a k-blade.) 

  • A flat bone, especially the shoulder blade. 

  • Synonym of knifeblade 

  • The part of a key that is inserted into the lock. 

  • A sword or knife. 

shank

verb
  • To stab, especially with an improvised blade. 

  • To hit or kick the ball in an unintended direction. 

  • To misstrike the ball with the part of the club head that connects to the shaft. 

  • To fall off, as a leaf, flower, or capsule, on account of disease affecting the supporting footstalk; usually followed by off. 

  • To remove another's trousers, especially in jest; to depants. 

  • To provide (a button) with a shank (loop forming an eye). 

  • To apply the shank to a shoe, during the process of manufacturing it. 

adj
  • Bad. 

noun
  • The center part of a fishhook between the eye and the hook, the 'hook' being the curved part that bends toward the point. 

  • A poorly played golf shot in which the ball is struck by the part of the club head that connects to the shaft. 

  • A redshank or greenshank, various species of Old World wading birds in the genus Tringa having distinctly colored legs. 

  • A large ladle for molten metal, fitted with long bars for handling it. 

  • The main part or beginning of a period of time. 

  • Meat from that part of an animal. 

  • The handle of a pair of shears, connecting the ride to the neck. 

  • An improvised stabbing weapon. 

  • The space between two channels of the Doric triglyph. 

  • The part of the sole beneath the instep connecting the broader front part with the heel. 

  • The end or remainder, particularly of a period of time. 

  • A loop forming an eye to a button. 

  • The metal part on a curb bit that falls below the mouthpiece, which length controls the severity of the leverage action of the bit, and to which the reins of the bridle are attached. 

  • A protruding part of an object, by which it is or can be attached. 

  • A straight, narrow part of an object, such as a key or an anchor; shaft; stem. 

  • The part of the leg between the knee and the ankle. 

  • Flat-nosed pliers, used by opticians for nipping off the edges of pieces of glass to make them round. 

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