nib vs spire

nib

noun
  • A small and pointed thing or part; a point; a prong. 

  • The bill or beak of a bird; the neb. 

  • The shaft of a wagon. 

  • A piece of a roasted, hulled cocoa bean. 

  • Bits of trapped dust or other foreign material that form imperfections in painted or varnished surfaces. 

  • One of the handles projecting from a scythe snath. 

  • The tip of a pen or tool that touches the surface, transferring ink to paper. 

verb
  • To fit (a pen) with a nib. 

spire

noun
  • A sharp or tapering point. 

  • A tapering structure built on a roof or tower, especially as one of the central architectural features of a church or cathedral roof. 

  • One of the sinuous foldings of a serpent or other reptile; a coil. 

  • A young shoot of a plant; a spear. 

  • A tube or fuse for communicating fire to the charge in blasting. 

  • A spiral. 

  • The top, or uppermost point, of anything; the summit. 

  • The part of a spiral generated in one revolution of the straight line about the pole. 

  • Any of various tall grasses, rushes, or sedges, such as the marram, the reed canary-grass, etc. 

verb
  • to sprout, to send forth the early shoots of growth; to germinate. 

  • To furnish with a spire. 

  • To grow upwards rather than develop horizontally. 

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