abortive vs spinning one’s wheels

abortive

adj
  • Made from the skin of a still-born animal. 

  • Imperfectly formed or developed; rudimentary; sterile. 

  • Coming to nothing; failing in its effect. . 

  • Causing abortion; abortifacient 

  • Cutting short; acting to halt or slow the progress (of a disease). 

spinning one’s wheels

How often have the words abortive and spinning one’s wheels occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )