slate vs tile

slate

noun
  • An artificial material resembling slate and used for the same purposes. 

  • A list of affiliated candidates for an election. 

  • A record of money owed. 

  • A tablet computer. 

  • A thin plate of any material; a flake. 

  • A fine-grained homogeneous sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash which has been metamorphosed so that it cleaves easily into thin layers. 

  • The bluish-grey colour of most slate. 

  • A chalkboard, sheet of slate for writing on with chalk or with a thin rod of slate (a slate pencil) formerly commonly used by both students and teachers in schools. 

  • A roofing-tile made of slate. 

verb
  • To cover with slate. 

  • To schedule. 

  • To criticise harshly. 

  • To set a dog upon (a person). 

  • To anticipate or strongly expect. 

  • To nominate, appoint, or designate. 

adj
  • Having the bluish-grey/gray colour of slate. 

tile

noun
  • 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. 

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

  • A rectangular graphic. 

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 slate and tile occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )