bear down vs struggle

bear down

verb
  • To push (someone) to the ground; to defeat, overcome. 

  • To approach in a determined manner. 

  • To steer away from the wind; to approach from windward. 

  • To intensify one's efforts. 

  • To exert downward pressure on one's abdomen, as in giving birth, forcing out feces, and some similar bodily maneuvers. 

  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bear, down. 

struggle

verb
  • To strive, or to make efforts, with a twisting, or with contortions of the body. 

  • To strive, to labour in difficulty, to fight (for or against), to contend. 

noun
  • A contortion of the body in an attempt to escape or to perform a difficult task. 

  • Strife, contention, great effort. 

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