hardball vs softball

hardball

verb
  • To exhibit tough and ruthless behavior towards. 

adj
  • Being or exhibiting tough or ruthless behavior, especially in combat, politics or business. 

noun
  • Tough or ruthless behavior, especially in combat, politics or business. 

  • In baseball, a type of ball and baseball game, as opposed to softball. 

softball

noun
  • A question designed to be easy to answer. 

  • A game similar to baseball but played with a larger and softer ball which can be thrown overhand or underhand. 

  • The ball used to play the sport. 

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