leave vs stagger

leave

verb
  • To cause or allow (something) to remain as available; to refrain from taking (something) away; to stop short of consuming or otherwise depleting (something) entirely. 

  • To cause, to result in. 

  • To let be or do without interference. 

  • To transfer possession of after death. 

  • To give leave to; allow; permit; let; grant. 

  • To produce leaves or foliage. 

  • To put; to place; to deposit; to deliver, with a sense of withdrawing oneself. 

  • To give (something) to someone; to deliver (something) to a repository; to deposit. 

  • To depart; to go away from a certain place or state. 

  • To transfer responsibility or attention of (something) (to someone); to stop being concerned with. 

  • To depart from; to end one's connection or affiliation with. 

  • To end one's membership in (a group); to terminate one's affiliation with (an organization); to stop participating in (a project). 

noun
  • The action of the batsman not attempting to play at the ball. 

  • The arrangement of balls in play that remains after a shot is made (which determines whether the next shooter — who may be either the same player, or an opponent — has good options, or only poor ones). 

  • Permission to be absent; time away from one's work. 

  • Permission. 

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