opponent vs weathercock

opponent

noun
  • One who opposes another; one who works or takes a position against someone or something; one who attempts to stop the progress of someone or something. 

  • The participant who opens an academic debate by putting forward objections to a theological or philosophical thesis. 

  • One who opposes another in words (in a dispute, argument or controversy). 

  • One who is opposed or objects (to a policy, course of action or set of ideas). 

  • One who opposes another physically (in a fight, sport, game, or competition). 

weathercock

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

  • 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. 

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 opponent and weathercock occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )