exacerbate
ig-ZAS-er-bayt · verb
To make a problem, conflict, or harmful condition worse.
Memory connection
Picture “eggs as her bait”
Picture someone using eggs as her bait during an argument. The eggs splatter everywhere and make the conflict far worse.
The sound cue helps you reach the scene; the action in the scene carries you from the scene to the definition.
Use it accurately
Meaning in context
Delaying the repair allowed the leak to exacerbate the building’s structural damage.
Public accusations may exacerbate tensions between the two groups.
Exacerbate takes an existing negative condition as its object. People sometimes confuse it with exasperate, which means to irritate someone intensely.
Common patterns
- exacerbate a problem
- exacerbate tensions
- further exacerbate
Go deeper
Build a more precise understanding
Where the word comes from
Exacerbate traces to Latin exacerbare, “to irritate or provoke.” That verb is related to acerbus, “harsh” or “bitter,” so the word carries the image of making an already bitter condition harsher.
Register and usage
This fairly formal verb almost always points in a negative direction. Problems, symptoms, disputes, shortages, and inequalities can all be exacerbated when something makes them worse.
Word family
- exacerbation (noun)
- exacerbated (adjective or past participle)
- exacerbating (adjective or present participle)
References for further checking
These links provide fuller dictionary and word-history entries. MnemoWords writes its own learner explanation rather than reproducing their definitions.
Quick check
Can you retrieve the meaning?
Which development would exacerbate a water shortage?
Choose an answer, then explain it in your own words.