pale vs taint

pale

noun
  • A cheese scoop. 

  • Limits, bounds (especially before of). 

  • A vertical band down the middle of a shield. 

  • The bounds of morality, good behaviour or judgment in civilized company, in the phrase beyond the pale. 

  • A wooden stake; a picket. 

adj
  • Feeble, faint. 

  • Light in color. 

  • Having a pallor (a light color, especially due to sickness, shock, fright etc.). 

verb
  • To make pale; to diminish the brightness of. 

  • To turn pale; to lose colour. 

  • To enclose with pales, or as if with pales; to encircle or encompass; to fence off. 

  • To become insignificant. 

taint

noun
  • A contamination, decay or putrefaction, especially in food. 

  • A tinge, trace or touch. 

  • A mark of disgrace, especially on one's character; blemish. 

  • A marker indicating that a variable is unsafe and should be subjected to additional security checks. 

  • A thrust with a lance, which fails of its intended effect. 

  • An injury done to a lance in an encounter, without its being broken; also, a breaking of a lance in an encounter in a dishonorable or unscientific manner. 

  • The perineum. 

verb
  • To contaminate or corrupt (something) with an external agent, either physically or morally. 

  • To damage, as a lance, without breaking it; also, to break, as a lance, but usually in an unknightly or unscientific manner. 

  • To be infected or corrupted; to be touched by something corrupting. 

  • To thrust ineffectually with a lance. 

  • To invalidate (a share capital account) by transferring profits into it. 

  • To be affected with incipient putrefaction. 

  • To spoil (food) by contamination. 

  • To mark (a variable) as unsafe, so that operations involving it are subject to additional security checks. 

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