hold up vs thwart

hold up

verb
  • To withstand; to stand up to; to survive. 

  • To wait or delay. 

  • To support or lift. 

  • To fulfil or complete one's part of an agreement. 

  • To rob at gunpoint. 

  • To impede; detain. 

  • (Of an artistic work) To continue to be seen as good, to avoid seeming dated. 

  • To keep up; not to fall behind; not to lose ground. 

thwart

verb
  • To cause to fail; to frustrate, to prevent. 

adj
  • Placed or situated across something else; cross, oblique, transverse. 

noun
  • A seat across a boat on which a rower may sit. 

  • An act of thwarting; something which thwarts; a hindrance, an obstacle. 

  • A brace, perpendicular to the keel, that helps maintain the beam (“breadth”) of a marine vessel against external water pressure and that may serve to support the rail. 

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