vane vs weathercock

vane

noun
  • A weather vane. 

  • Any of several usually relatively thin, rigid, flat, or sometimes curved surfaces radially mounted along an axis, as a blade in a turbine or a sail on a windmill, that is turned by or used to turn a fluid. 

  • A sight on a sextant or compass. 

  • One of the metal guidance or stabilizing fins attached to the tail of a bomb or other missile. 

  • The flattened, web-like part of a feather, consisting of a series of barbs on either side of the shaft. 

weathercock

noun
  • A weather vane, sometimes in the form of a cockerel. 

  • A kind of wind pump whose top behaves like a weather vane, moving with the wind direction, but which also has a wheel attached to measure wind speed. 

  • One who veers with every change of current opinion; a fickle, inconstant person. 

verb
  • To act as a weathercock for. 

  • To turn upwind because of the difference in water pressure on two sides. 

  • To veer into the direction of the oncoming (relative) wind. 

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