exacerbate vs lessen

exacerbate

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

lessen

verb
  • To make less; to diminish; to reduce. 

  • To become less. 

conj
  • unless. 

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