aggravate

verb

1)

the new law could aggravate the situation

Syn:

worsen, make worse, exacerbate, inflame, compound; add fuel to the fire/flames, add insult to injury, rub salt in the wound

Ant:

alleviate, improve

2) informal

you don't have to aggravate people to get what you want

Syn:

annoy, irritate, exasperate, bother, put out, nettle, provoke, antagonize, get on someone's nerves, ruffle (someone's feathers), try someone's patience; informal peeve, needle, bug, miff, get under someone's skin; tick off

Ant:

calm, conciliate

••

aggravate, aggravation

Though documented as existing since the 1600s, aggravate for annoy or irritate has never gained the approval of stylists and should be avoided in formal writing. Strictly speaking, aggravate means "make worse; exacerbate": writing a second apology might just aggravate the problem. Even the eloquent American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., nodded once, using aggravate for irritate in a letter penned in 1895: "Our two countries aggravate each other from time to time."

In some contexts, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether the word aggravating is a present participle or an adjective — e.g.: "The City of Washington is notorious for aggravating allergies, and Mr. Clinton said he expected his to be more severe there than in Arkansas." (New York Times; Oct. 14, 1996.) The second half of that compound sentence suggests that the writer is using aggravating correctly. But taken alone, the phrase in the first half of the sentence ("Washington is notorious for aggravating allergies") could refer to either (1) making allergies worse (the preferred usage), or (2) allergies that are irritating or frustrating.

The confusion also occurs between the noun forms — e.g.: "Rush Limbaugh … has an extra tone of aggravation [read irritation] as he denounces the unyielding poll leads of ‘the Schlickmeister’ and ‘noted hetero fun-seeker,’ President Clinton." (New York Times; Sept. 25, 1996.)

Perhaps exasperate contributes to the misuse of aggravate (which sounds a bit like exasperate) in the sense of irritate (which is close in meaning to exasperate). Also, when aggravate is used in this sense it often implies something more intense than merely irritate. It is closer in meaning to exasperate. — BG