fall vs stagger

fall

verb
  • To collapse; to be overthrown or defeated. 

  • To assume a look of shame or disappointment; to become or appear dejected; said of the face. 

  • To come as if by dropping down. 

  • To begin with haste, ardour, or vehemence; to rush or hurry. 

  • To occur (on a certain day of the week, date, or similar); to happen. 

  • To become. 

  • To move to a lower position under the effect of gravity. 

  • To happen; to come to pass; to chance or light (upon). 

  • To be dropped or uttered carelessly. 

  • To be brought to the ground. 

  • To die, especially in battle or by disease. 

  • To become lower (in quantity, pitch, etc.). 

  • To hang down (under the influence of gravity). 

  • To come to the ground deliberately, to prostrate oneself. 

  • To become ensnared or entrapped; to be worse off than before. 

  • To be allotted to; to arrive through chance, fate, or inheritance. 

  • To descend in character or reputation; to become degraded; to sink into vice, error, or sin. 

  • To come down, to drop or descend. 

noun
  • A reduction in quantity, pitch, etc. 

  • The action of a batsman being out. 

  • The part of the rope of a tackle to which the power is applied in hoisting (usu. plural). 

  • An old Scots unit of measure equal to six ells. 

  • The act of moving to a lower position under the effect of gravity. 

  • An instance of a wrestler being pinned to the mat. 

  • A short, flexible piece of leather forming part of a bullwhip, placed between the thong and the cracker. 

  • The lid, on a piano, that covers the keyboard 

  • A defect in the ice which causes stones thrown into an area to drift in a given direction. 

  • A hairpiece for women consisting of long strands of hair on a woven backing, intended primarily to cover hair loss. 

  • Blame or punishment for a failure or misdeed. 

  • The chasing of a hunted whale. 

  • A loss of greatness or status. 

  • That which falls or cascades. 

intj
  • The cry given when a whale is sighted, or harpooned. 

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 fall and stagger occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )