reject vs throw in the towel

reject

verb
  • To refuse to accept. 

  • To refuse a romantic advance. 

  • To block a shot, especially if it sends the ball off the court. 

noun
  • A rejected takeoff. 

  • A rejected defective product in a production line. 

  • Something that is rejected. 

  • An unpopular person. 

throw in the towel

verb
  • To quit; to give up. 

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