improvement vs speck

improvement

noun
  • Increase; growth; progress; advance. 

  • The act of improving; advancement or growth; a bettering 

  • Something which is improved 

  • Valuable additions or betterments, for example buildings, clearings, drains, fences, etc., on premises. 

  • A useful addition to, or modification of, a machine, manufacture, or composition. 

  • The state of being improved; betterment; advance 

  • The act of making profitable use or application of anything, or the state of being profitably employed; practical application, for example of a doctrine, principle, or theory, stated in a discourse. 

speck

noun
  • A juniper-flavoured ham originally from Tyrol. 

  • The fat of the hippopotamus. 

  • A very small thing; a particle; a whit. 

  • A tiny spot, especially of dirt etc. 

  • Fat; lard; fat meat. 

  • The blubber of whales or other marine mammals. 

  • A small etheostomoid fish, Etheostoma stigmaeum, common in the eastern United States. 

verb
  • To mark with specks; to speckle. 

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