confound vs stagger

confound

verb
  • To defeat, to frustrate, to thwart. 

  • To combine in a confused fashion; to mingle so as to make the parts indistinguishable. 

  • To stun or amaze. 

  • To make something worse. 

  • To cause to be ashamed; to abash. 

  • To fail to see the difference; to mix up; to confuse right and wrong. 

  • To perplex or puzzle. 

noun
  • A confounding variable. 

stagger

verb
  • To cease to stand firm; to begin to give way; to fail. 

  • To begin to doubt and waver in purposes; to become less confident or determined; to hesitate. 

  • To arrange (a series of parts) on each side of a median line alternately, as the spokes of a wheel or the rivets of a boiler seam. 

  • In standing or walking, to sway from one side to the other as if about to fall; to stand or walk unsteadily; to reel or totter. 

  • To cause to doubt and waver; to make to hesitate; to make less steady or confident; to shock. 

  • To arrange similar objects such that each is ahead or above and to one side of the next. 

  • To schedule in intervals or at different times. 

  • To cause to reel or totter. 

noun
  • An unsteady movement of the body in walking or standing as if one were about to fall; a reeling motion. 

  • The spacing out of various actions over time. 

  • One who attends a stag night. 

  • The horizontal positioning of a biplane, triplane, or multiplane's wings in relation to one another. 

  • Bewilderment; perplexity. 

  • The difference in circumference between the left and right tires on a racing vehicle. It is used on oval tracks to make the car turn better in the corners. 

  • A disease of horses and other animals, attended by reeling, unsteady gait or sudden falling. 

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