balk vs skip

balk

verb
  • To leave or make balks in. 

  • To refuse suddenly. 

  • To stop short and refuse to go on. 

  • To leave heaped up; to heap up in piles. 

  • To omit, miss, or overlook by chance. 

  • To make a deceptive motion to deceive another player. 

  • To stop, check, block. 

  • To indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring. 

  • To engage in contradiction; to be in opposition. 

  • To disappoint; to frustrate. 

noun
  • Beam, crossbeam; squared timber; a tie beam of a house, stretching from wall to wall, especially when laid so as to form a loft, "the balks". 

  • The wall of earth at the edge of an excavation. 

  • The area of the table lying behind the baulk line. 

  • A sudden and obstinate stop. 

  • A hindrance or disappointment; a check. 

  • The rope by which fishing nets are fastened together. 

  • The area of the table lying behind the line from which the cue ball is initially shot, and from which a ball in hand must be played. 

  • An illegal motion by the pitcher, intended to deceive a runner. 

  • A motion used to deceive the opponent during a serve. 

  • An uncultivated ridge formed in the open field system, caused by the action of ploughing. 

skip

verb
  • To leave, especially in a sudden and covert manner. 

  • To move by hopping on alternate feet. 

  • To cause the stylus to jump back to the previous loop of the record's groove, continously repeating that part of the sound, as a result of excessive scratching or wear. 

  • To skim, ricochet or bounce over a surface. 

  • To pass by a stitch as if it were not there, continuing with the next stitch. 

  • To place an item in a skip (etymology 2, sense 1). 

  • To throw (something), making it skim, ricochet, or bounce over a surface. 

  • To disregard, miss or omit part of a continuation (some item or stage). 

  • To have insufficient ink transfer. 

  • To leap about lightly. 

  • Not to attend (some event, especially a class or a meeting). 

  • To jump rope. 

  • To leap lightly over. 

noun
  • A large open-topped container for waste, designed to be lifted onto the back of a truck to remove it along with its contents. (see also skep). 

  • A college servant. 

  • A skip car. 

  • The player who calls the shots and traditionally throws the last two rocks. 

  • An Australian of Anglo-Celtic descent. 

  • A leaping, jumping or skipping movement. 

  • The scoutmaster of a troop of scouts (youth organization) and their form of address to him. 

  • The act of passing over an interval from one thing to another; an omission of a part. 

  • A wheeled basket used in cotton factories. 

  • A skep, or basket, such as a creel or a handbasket. 

  • A person who attempts to disappear so as not to be found. 

  • A charge of syrup in the pans. 

  • A passage from one sound to another by more than a degree at once. 

  • skywave propagation 

  • The captain of a sports team. Also, a form of address by the team to the captain. 

  • The captain of a bowls team, who directs the team's tactics and rolls the side's last wood, so as to be able to retrieve a difficult situation if necessary. 

  • A beehive. 

  • A transportation container in a mine, usually for ore or mullock. 

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