dyke vs wharf

dyke

noun
  • A jetty; a pier. 

  • An embankment formed by the creation of a ditch. 

  • A body of rock (usually igneous) originally filling a fissure but now often rising above the older stratum as it is eroded away. 

  • An earthwork raised to prevent inundation of low land by the sea or flooding rivers. 

  • A raised causeway. 

  • Any small body of water. 

  • Any fence or hedge. 

  • Any navigable watercourse. 

  • A beaver's dam. 

  • Any impediment, barrier, or difficulty. 

  • A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to serve as a boundary marker. 

  • A lesbian, particularly one with masculine or butch traits or behavior. 

  • A non-heterosexual woman. 

  • Any watercourse. 

  • A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to conduct water. 

  • A place to urinate and defecate: an outhouse or lavatory. 

  • A fissure in a rock stratum filled with intrusive rock; a fault. 

  • A low embankment or stone wall serving as an enclosure and boundary marker. 

verb
  • To dig, particularly to create a ditch. 

  • To surround with a ditch, to entrench. 

  • To scour a watercourse. 

  • To steep [fibers] within a watercourse. 

  • To surround with a low dirt or stone wall. 

  • To raise a protective earthwork against a sea or river. 

wharf

noun
  • The bank of a river, or the shore of the sea. 

  • A man-made landing place for ships on a shore or river bank. 

verb
  • To place on a wharf. 

  • To secure by a wharf. 

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