soften up vs stoke

soften up

verb
  • To appease someone in order to make them more receptive to an idea or proposal. 

  • To become less committed to something. 

  • To make softer. 

stoke

verb
  • To encourage a behavior or emotion. 

  • To attend to or supply a furnace with fuel; to act as a stoker or fireman. 

  • To poke, pierce, thrust. 

  • To feed, stir up, especially, a fire or furnace. 

noun
  • An act of poking, piercing, thrusting 

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