balk vs tile

balk

noun
  • The area of the table lying behind the baulk line. 

  • Beam, crossbeam; squared timber; a tie beam of a house, stretching from wall to wall, especially when laid so as to form a loft, "the balks". 

  • The wall of earth at the edge of an excavation. 

  • A sudden and obstinate stop. 

  • A hindrance or disappointment; a check. 

  • The rope by which fishing nets are fastened together. 

  • The area of the table lying behind the line from which the cue ball is initially shot, and from which a ball in hand must be played. 

  • An illegal motion by the pitcher, intended to deceive a runner. 

  • A motion used to deceive the opponent during a serve. 

  • An uncultivated ridge formed in the open field system, caused by the action of ploughing. 

verb
  • To refuse suddenly. 

  • To stop short and refuse to go on. 

  • To leave heaped up; to heap up in piles. 

  • To omit, miss, or overlook by chance. 

  • To leave or make balks in. 

  • To make a deceptive motion to deceive another player. 

  • To stop, check, block. 

  • To indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring. 

  • To engage in contradiction; to be in opposition. 

  • To disappoint; to frustrate. 

tile

noun
  • A rectangular graphic. 

  • Any of various flat cuboid playing pieces used in certain games, such as dominoes, Scrabble, or mahjong. 

  • A regularly-shaped slab of clay or other material, affixed to cover or decorate a surface, as in a roof-tile, glazed tile, stove tile, carpet tile, etc. 

verb
  • To seal a lodge against intrusions from unauthorised people. 

  • To protect from the intrusion of the uninitiated. 

  • To arrange in a regular pattern, with adjoining edges (applied to tile-like objects, graphics, windows in a computer interface). 

  • To optimize (a loop in program code) by means of the tiling technique. 

  • To cover with tiles. 

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