practice vs tack

practice

noun
  • A customary action, habit, or behaviour; a manner or routine. 

  • The ongoing pursuit of a craft or profession, particularly in medicine or the fine arts. 

  • Actual operation or experiment, in contrast to theory. 

  • A place where a professional service is provided, such as a general practice. 

  • The observance of religious duties that a church requires of its members. 

  • An organized event for the purpose of performing such repetition. 

  • The form, manner, and order of conducting and carrying on suits and prosecutions through their various stages, according to the principles of law and the rules laid down by the courts. 

  • Skilful or artful management; dexterity in contrivance or the use of means; stratagem; artifice. 

  • Repetition of an activity to improve a skill. 

  • A easy and concise method of applying the rules of arithmetic to questions which occur in trade and business. 

tack

noun
  • A direction or course of action, especially a new one. 

  • The distance a sailing vessel runs between these maneuvers when working to windward; a board. 

  • A rope used to hold in place the foremost lower corners of the courses when the vessel is close-hauled; also, a rope employed to pull the lower corner of a studding sail to the boom. 

  • Any of the various equipment and accessories worn by horses in the course of their use as domesticated animals. 

  • The maneuver by which a sailing vessel turns its bow through the wind so that the wind changes from one side to the other. 

  • A contract by which the use of a thing is set, or let, for hire; a lease. 

  • The stickiness of a compound, related to its cohesive and adhesive properties. 

  • That which is tacky; something cheap and gaudy. 

  • A small nail with a flat head. 

  • A stain; a tache. 

  • That which is attached; a supplement; an appendix. 

  • A course or heading that enables a sailing vessel to head upwind. 

  • Food generally; fare, especially of the bread kind. 

  • A loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth. 

  • A thumbtack. 

  • The lower corner on the leading edge of a sail relative to the direction of the wind. 

verb
  • To nail with a tack (small nail with a flat head). 

  • To maneuver a sailing vessel so that its bow turns through the wind, i.e. the wind changes from one side of the vessel to the other. 

  • To add something as an extra item. 

  • To sew/stitch with a tack (loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth). 

  • to tack (something) onto (something) 

  • To place the tack on a horse; often paired with "up". 

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