spire vs tower

spire

noun
  • 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. 

  • A sharp or tapering point. 

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. 

tower

noun
  • Any very tall building or structure; skyscraper. 

  • The sixteenth trump or Major Arcana card in many Tarot decks, usually deemed an ill omen. 

  • A water tower. 

  • A strong refuge; a defence. 

  • The nineteenth Lenormand card, representing structure, bureaucracy, stability and loneliness. 

  • A very tall iron-framed structure, usually painted red and white, on which microwave, radio, satellite, or other communication antennas are installed; mast. 

  • A control tower. 

  • An interlocking tower. 

  • A tall fashionable headdress worn in the time of King William III and Queen Anne. 

  • A similarly framed structure with a platform or enclosed area on top, used as a lookout for spotting fires, plane crashes, fugitives, etc. 

  • One who tows. 

  • An item of various kinds, such as a computer case, that is higher than it is wide. 

verb
  • To be high or lofty; to soar. 

  • To be very tall. 

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