blow up vs shorten

blow up

verb
  • To become much more fat or rotund in a short space of time. 

  • To blow something upward. 

  • To succumb to oxygen debt and lose the ability to maintain pace in a race. 

  • To blow the whistle. 

  • To suddenly get very angry. 

  • To fail disastrously. 

  • To explode or be destroyed by explosion. 

  • To become popular very quickly. 

  • To bombard with a large number of calls, texts, etc., often exasperating the recipient. 

  • Receiving a large number of calls or notifications to the point of making the device effectively unusable. 

  • To cause a malodorous smell by flatulation or defecation. 

  • To cause (something or someone) to explode, or to destroy (something) or maim or kill (someone) by means of an explosion. 

  • To inflate or fill with air, either by literally blowing or using an air pump. 

  • To enlarge or zoom in. 

shorten

verb
  • To become shorter. 

  • To reduce or diminish in amount, quantity, or extent; to lessen. 

  • To take in the slack of (a rope). 

  • To reduce (sail) by taking it in. 

  • To make shorter; to abbreviate. 

  • To make short or friable, as pastry, with butter, lard, etc. 

  • To make deficient (as to); to deprive (of). 

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