Aggravated

How to spell aggravated

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce aggravated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aggravated mean?

1. verbMade a problem, injury, or situation more serious or severe.
2. adjectiveFeeling or showing irritation and annoyance.
3. adjectiveDescribing a crime made more serious by additional harmful circumstances.

Aggravated in a sentence

• verb

  Lifting the heavy boxes aggravated his old back injury.

• adjective

  She sounded aggravated when the call was put on hold for the third time.

• adjective

  He was charged with aggravated assault after the victim was badly injured.

• verb

  The new tax rules only aggravated the firm's cash-flow problems.

• adjective

  The aggravated commuters complained loudly about the delayed train.

• adjective

  The court treated it as aggravated burglary because a weapon was used.

Where does aggravated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb aggravare, meaning 'to make heavier' or 'to weigh down', formed from ad ('to, towards') and gravis ('heavy, serious'). The double g in the spelling is the trap, and it comes from the way the Latin prefix ad assimilated before a g, turning into ag before the root. English took the word in during the early 1500s, at first in the literal sense of adding weight or burden, and then quickly in the figurative sense of making a bad situation worse. From the 1600s it also drifted, in everyday speech, into meaning 'to annoy or irritate', which is why someone can sound aggravated when they are merely exasperated. The same gravis root sits inside the familiar words 'grave', 'gravity', and 'grief', all of which carry that core idea of heaviness or seriousness.

How the word is built

• ag- (to, assimilated form of ad-)
• grav (heavy, from Latin gravis)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ed (past tense / participle)