exacerbate vs twist the knife

exacerbate

verb
  • To make worse (a problem, bad situation, negative feeling, etc.); aggravate; exasperate. 

twist the knife

verb
  • To deliberately do or say something to worsen a difficult situation or increase a person's distress, irritation, or anger. 

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