aggravation vs distress

aggravation

noun
  • Provocation, irritation, annoyance. 

  • An extrinsic circumstance or accident which increases the guilt of a crime or the misery of a calamity. 

  • The act of aggravating, or making worse; used of evils, natural or moral; the act of increasing in severity or heinousness; something additional to a crime or wrong and enhancing its guilt or injurious consequences. 

  • Exaggerated representation. 

distress

noun
  • Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature. 

  • A cause of such discomfort. 

  • The thing taken by distraining; that which is seized to procure satisfaction. 

  • Serious danger. 

  • A seizing of property without legal process to force payment of a debt. 

  • An aversive state of stress to which a person cannot fully adapt. 

verb
  • To treat a new object to give it an appearance of age. 

  • To retain someone’s property against the payment of a debt; to distrain. 

  • To cause strain or anxiety to someone. 

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