surface vs tile

surface

verb
  • To provide something with a surface. 

  • To apply a surface to something. 

  • To make (information or facts) known. 

  • To become known or apparent; to appear or be found. 

  • To bring to the surface. 

  • To come out of hiding. 

  • To work a mine near the surface. 

  • To rise to the surface. 

noun
  • Outward or external appearance. 

  • The outside hull of a tangible object. 

  • The overside or up-side of a flat object such as a table, or of a liquid. 

  • The locus of an equation (especially one with exactly two degrees of freedom) in a more-than-two-dimensional space. 

tile

verb
  • To cover with tiles. 

  • 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. 

noun
  • 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. 

  • A rectangular graphic. 

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