fire vs slug

fire

noun
  • The bullets or other projectiles fired from a gun or other ranged weapon. 

  • A heater or stove used in place of a real fire (such as an electric fire). 

  • Splendour; brilliancy; lustre; hence, a star. 

  • The elements necessary to start a fire. 

  • Strength of passion, whether love or hate. 

  • Red coloration in a piece of opal. 

  • The occurrence, often accidental, of fire in a certain place, causing damage and danger. 

  • A (usually self-sustaining) chemical reaction involving the bonding of oxygen with carbon or other fuel, with the production of heat and the presence of flame or smouldering. 

  • Liveliness of imagination or fancy; intellectual and moral enthusiasm. 

  • An instance of this chemical reaction, especially when intentionally created and maintained in a specific location to a useful end (such as a campfire or a hearth fire). 

  • A planned bombardment by artillery or similar weapons, or the capability to deliver such. 

  • A severe trial; anything inflaming or provoking. 

  • An instance of firing one or more rocket engines. 

  • The aforementioned chemical reaction of burning, considered one of the Classical elements or basic elements of alchemy. 

adj
  • Amazing; excellent. 

verb
  • To shoot a gun, cannon, or similar weapon. 

  • To initiate an event (by means of an event handler). 

  • To forcibly direct (something). 

  • To shoot (a gun, rocket/missile, or analogous device). 

  • To drive away by setting a fire. 

  • To animate; to give life or spirit to. 

  • To shoot; to attempt to score a goal. 

  • To set (something, often a building) on fire. 

  • To set off an explosive in a mine. 

  • To light up as if by fire; to illuminate. 

  • To feed or serve the fire of. 

  • To operate a rocket engine to produce thrust. 

  • To terminate the employment contract of (an employee), especially for cause (such as misconduct or poor performance). 

  • To terminate a contract with a client; to drop a client. 

  • To inflame; to irritate, as the passions. 

  • To heat as with fire, but without setting on fire, as ceramic, metal objects, etc. 

  • To cause an action potential in a cell. 

  • To cauterize. 

slug

noun
  • A bullet or other projectile fired from a firearm; in modern usage, generally refers to a shotgun slug. 

  • A title, name or header, a catchline, a short phrase or title to indicate the content of a newspaper or magazine story for editing use. 

  • The last part of a clean URL, the displayed resource name, similar to a filename. 

  • A hard blow, usually with the fist. 

  • A black screen. 

  • A motile pseudoplasmodium formed by amoebae working together. 

  • A piece of type metal imprinted by a linotype machine; also a black mark placed in the margin to indicate an error; also said in application to typewriters; type slug. 

  • A ship that sails slowly. 

  • The imperial (English) unit of mass that accelerates by 1 foot per second squared (1 ft/s²) when a force of one pound-force (lbf) is exerted on it. 

  • A solid block or piece of roughly shaped metal. 

  • Any of many terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks, having no (or only a rudimentary) shell. 

  • An accessory to a diesel-electric locomotive, used to increase adhesive weight and allow full power to be applied at a lower speed. It has trucks with traction motors, but lacks a prime mover, being powered by electricity from the mother locomotive, and may or may not have a control cab. 

  • A stranger picked up as a passenger to enable legal use of high occupancy vehicle lanes. 

  • A hitchhiking commuter. 

  • A counterfeit coin, especially one used to steal from vending machines. 

  • A discrete mass of a material that moves as a unit, usually through another material. 

  • A shot of a drink, usually alcoholic. 

verb
  • To hit very hard, usually with the fist. 

  • To drink quickly; to gulp; to down. 

  • To take part in casual carpooling; to form ad hoc, informal carpools for commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking. 

  • To make sluggish. 

  • To become reduced in diameter, or changed in shape, by passing from a larger to a smaller part of the bore of the barrel. 

  • To load with a slug or slugs. 

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