take a dip vs tread water

take a dip

verb
  • To swim. 

tread water

verb
  • To remain afloat in the water without use of any buoyancy aid, by using kicking motions and hand motions. 

  • To make no progress, expending effort just enough to maintain a stable position. 

How often have the words take a dip and tread water occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )