cough vs whistle

cough

verb
  • To make a noise like a cough. 

  • To push air from the lungs in a quick, noisy explosion. 

  • To force something out of the throat or lungs by coughing. 

noun
  • A sudden, usually noisy expulsion of air from the lungs, often involuntary. 

  • Used to focus attention on a following utterance, often a euphemism or an attribution of blame. 

  • A condition that causes one to cough; a tendency to cough. 

whistle

verb
  • To make a shrill, high-pitched sound by forcing air through the mouth. To produce a whistling sound, restrictions to the flow of air are created using the teeth, tongue and lips. 

  • To make a similar sound by forcing air through a musical instrument or a pipe etc. 

  • To move in such a way as to create a whistling sound. 

  • To send, signal, or call by a whistle. 

noun
  • A device designed to be placed in the mouth and blown, or driven by steam or some other mechanism, to make a whistling sound. 

  • An act of whistling. 

  • A shrill, high-pitched sound made by whistling. 

  • Any high-pitched sound similar to the sound made by whistling. 

  • A suit (from whistle and flute). 

  • The mouth and throat; so called as being the organs of whistling. 

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