What does to "evolve" exactly mean?
A couple of comments, but maybe not an answer; I think misuse is the wrong word - alternative meaning is better. 'Evolve' as a word is much older than the theory of evolution, and has its origin in the Latin evolvere:


  evolve (v.) 
      1640s, "to unfold, open out, expand," from Latin evolvere "to unroll, roll out, roll forth, unfold," especially of books; figuratively "to make clear, disclose; to produce, develop,"
  from assimilated form of ex- "out" (see ex-) + volvere "to roll" (see volvox). Meaning "to develop by natural processes to a higher state" is from 1832. Related: Evolved; evolving.


from Online Etymology Dictionary. Implicit in that definition is the laying out of something predetermined, which can relate to going from simpler to more complex.

Also note that Darwin only used the word 'evolve' once in On the Origin of Species (1859), in the final sentence: 


  There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
  powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one;
  and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
  law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
  and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. 


The implication of progress was one reason why Darwin disliked the word 'evolve' and preferred "descent with modification".

The same root was then used as a name to the theory of Evolution, but then in a much more specific sense than the older, general meaning.

If you look back at the etymology above, it is quite clear that biological evolution (The Modern synthesis version) emphazise the connotations 'expand', 'produce' and 'develop', but not the 'unroll' and 'unfold' parts (which both to some extent imply something predetermined).