Exasperate & Exacerbate
Last week, I listened to
a speaker confuse the words exasperate and exacerbate. “This will only
exasperate the problem,” he said, actually meaning exacerbate. It’s becoming a
common mistake, primarily because the pronunciation is so close.
Originally, the two
words were nearly interchangeable, referring as they did to severity.
Exasperate was built on a Latin word that meant rough or harsh. Exacerbate was
based on a Latin word that meant bitter or harsh.
But over the centuries,
the words settled into individual niches. Exacerbate now refers to worsening a
situation, especially one involving distress, pain, disease, or emotions. The
synonym to focus on is the word worsen:
·
The prairie
fire was exacerbated by months of drought.
·
Deliberately
hostile language will exacerbate the difficulty of negotiations.
·
The dust
storm will exacerbate her congestion.
Exasperate means to
provoke to anger or irritation. Think of the synonym annoy:
·
The long
lines at the airport exasperated me.
·
She let out
an exasperated sigh and left the room.
·
Teenagers instinctively
know how to exasperate their parents.
In summary, exasperation
is internal; it’s a feeling of irritation that I experience. Exacerbation is
external; it involves a situation or problem outside me.
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