sag vs stagger

sag

verb
  • To lean, give way, or settle from a vertical position. 

  • To cause to bend or give way; to load. 

  • To wear one's trousers so that their top is well below the waist. 

  • To pull down someone else's pants. 

  • To loiter in walking; to idle along; to drag or droop heavily. 

  • To sink, in the middle, by its weight or under applied pressure, below a horizontal line or plane. 

  • To lose firmness, elasticity, vigor, or a thriving state; to sink; to droop; to flag; to bend; to yield, as the mind or spirits, under the pressure of care, trouble, doubt, or the like; to be unsettled or unbalanced. 

noun
  • The state of sinking or bending; a droop. 

  • The difference in height or depth between the vertex and the rim of a curved surface, specifically used for optical elements such as a mirror or lens. 

  • The difference in elevation of a wire, cable, chain or rope suspended between two consecutive points. 

stagger

verb
  • 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 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. 

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