Aggravating

How to spell aggravating

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce aggravating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aggravating mean?

1. adjectiveCausing irritation or exasperation; deeply annoying.
2. verbMaking a problem, injury, or situation more serious or severe.

Aggravating in a sentence

• adjective

  The constant drip from the tap was an aggravating sound all night.

• verb

  Running on the sprain was only aggravating the injury.

• adjective

  She found the slow checkout queue genuinely aggravating after a long shift.

• verb

  The new tax rules are aggravating an already difficult cash-flow problem.

Where does aggravating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb aggravare, meaning 'to make heavier' or 'to weigh down', which was built from the prefix ad- ('to, toward') and gravis ('heavy, serious'). The same gravis lies behind familiar English words such as 'grave', 'gravity', and 'grief', all carrying a sense of weight or seriousness. When the word entered English in the sixteenth century it kept the literal Latin idea of making a burden heavier, so 'aggravate' first meant 'to make a fault or trouble worse'. Over time the everyday spoken sense drifted toward 'to irritate or exasperate', which is now the most common meaning, though careful writers still use the older 'make worse' sense. The doubled g comes straight from the Latin assimilation of ad- to ag- before the g of gravis, which is the spelling trap worth remembering: one d became a second g.

How the word is built

• ag- (variant of ad-: to, toward)
• grav (heavy, from Latin gravis)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ing (participle/adjective ending)