distress vs vex

distress

verb
  • To cause strain or anxiety to someone. 

  • 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. 

noun
  • A cause of such discomfort. 

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

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

  • 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. 

vex

verb
  • To cause (mental) suffering to; to distress. 

  • To toss back and forth; to agitate; to disquiet. 

  • To twist, to weave. 

  • To annoy, irritate. 

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