confound vs twist the knife

confound

verb
  • To make something worse. 

  • To combine in a confused fashion; to mingle so as to make the parts indistinguishable. 

  • To stun or amaze. 

  • To cause to be ashamed; to abash. 

  • To defeat, to frustrate, to thwart. 

  • To fail to see the difference; to mix up; to confuse right and wrong. 

  • To perplex or puzzle. 

noun
  • A confounding variable. 

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 confound and twist the knife occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )