twist the knife vs worsen

twist the knife

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

worsen

verb
  • To make worse; to impair. 

  • To become worse; to get worse. 

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