exacerbate

verb

ex·ac·er·bate ig-ˈza-sər-ˌbāt

exacerbated; exacerbating

Synonyms of exacerbate next

transitive verb

: to make more violent, bitter, or severe

The new law only exacerbates the problem.

exacerbation

ig-ˌza-sər-ˈbā-shən

noun

Did you know?

The Latin adjective acer, meaning "sharp," forms the basis of a number of English words. Acerbic ("having a bitter temper or sour mood"), acrid ("having a sharp taste or odor"), and acrimony ("a harsh manner or disposition") are just the tip of the jagged iceberg. First appearing in English in the 17th century, exacerbate combines the Latin prefix ex- ("out of" or "outside") with acer offspring acerbus, meaning "harsh" or "bitter." Just as pouring salt in a wound worsens pain, things that exacerbate cause a situation to go from bad to worse. A pointed insult or cutting remark, for example, might exacerbate tensions between two bitter rivals. The legacy of acer isn't all negative, however. The Latin name for the genus of maple trees and shrubs is Acer, owing to maples’ characteristically pointy leaves.

Did you know?

Exacerbate vs. Exasperate

Exacerbate is frequently confused with exasperate, and with good reason. Not only do these words resemble one another in spelling and pronunciation, they also at one time held exceedingly similar meanings. Exasperate is today most commonly used as a synonym of annoy, but for several hundred years it also had the meanings “to make more grievous” and “to make harsh or harsher.” Exacerbate is now the more common choice of these two words when one seeks to indicate that something is becoming increasingly bitter, violent, or unpleasant. It comes in part from the Latin word acer, meaning “sharp,” whereas exasperate is from asper, the Latin word for “rough.”

Examples of exacerbate in a Sentence

The declining retirement security faced by growing numbers of Americans is being exacerbated by increasing longevity and quickly rising health care costs. —

Jeff Madrick, New York Review of Books, 20 Mar. 2008

… the sway that pack journalism holds on the Beltway press corps persists. The Crowd is never so influential as in the ever-lengthening season of presidential campaigns. The feverish obsessions of the blogosphere have only exacerbated the phenomenon: Now the herd just turns faster in pursuit of some ginned-up "controversy" or faux scandal. —

Editor & Publisher, April 2007

The proposed factory shutdown would only exacerbate our unemployment problems. His angry comments have exacerbated tensions in the negotiation process.

Recent Examples on the Web In the absence of sufficient salmon, other dangers to the orcas — the stress of boat traffic, the infiltration of chemical pollutants — are exacerbated, causing illness, death and pregnancy loss. —

Caitlin Gibson, Washington Post, 5 Dec. 2023 The problem was exacerbated in the 1980s when Thom Robb, leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, moved to rural Boone County and began using a Harrison post office box for the group's mailing address. —

Bill Bowden, arkansasonline.com, 3 Dec. 2023 As at many other campuses, the housing situation at Humboldt is exacerbated by a lack of housing in the surrounding area. —

Ryan Fonseca, Los Angeles Times, 1 Dec. 2023 This hostile landscape is further exacerbated by economic factors (such as those the U.K. is currently experiencing), which our research has indicated makes companies more vulnerable not just to external factors but to internal threats, too. —

Jamie Akhtar, Forbes, 30 Nov. 2023 Such fears are exacerbated by statements by members of the U.S. Congress, former senior officials, and leading scholars who call for everything from restoring official relations with Taiwan to resurrecting the U.S. alliance with it to stationing large numbers of U.S. forces on the island. —

Bonnie S. Glaser, Foreign Affairs, 30 Nov. 2023 There’s been a steady trend of that, and then that’s exacerbated by El Niño systems, which impact interior continental weather. —

Chris Klimek, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Nov. 2023 The aging of the world’s mature economies will continue to exacerbate structural shortcomings in the labor market. —

Sander Van 't Noordende, Fortune, 28 Nov. 2023 Island officials had been struggling to figure out what to do about the increasing amount of foul-smelling sargassum inundating their shores, an explosion exacerbated by warming ocean temperatures. —

Stephanie Hanes, The Christian Science Monitor, 21 Nov. 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'exacerbate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Latin exacerbātus, past participle of exacerbāre "to irritate, exasperate, make worse," from ex- ex- entry 1 + acerbāre "to make bitter, make worse," verbal derivative of acerbus "acid, bitter, bitterly hostile, distressing" — more at acerb

First Known Use

1660, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler

The first known use of exacerbate was in 1660

See more words from the same year